Abstract

Impurity measurements of the 28Si crystal used for the determination of the Avogadro constant are essential to prevent biased results or underestimated uncertainties. A review of the existing data confirmed the high purity of silicon with respect to a large number of elements. In order to obtain direct evidence of purity, we developed a relative analytical method based on neutron activation. As a preliminary test, this method was applied to a sample of the Avogadro natural silicon crystal WASO 04. The investigation concerned 29 elements. The mass fraction of Au was quantified to be (1.03 ± 0.18) × 10−12. For the remaining 28 elements, the mass fractions were below the detection limits, which ranged between 1 × 10−12 and 1 × 10−5.

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