Preparation of Large Volume Solid Argon Crystal and Its Feasibility Test as a Scintillation Material

Abstract

An important background to the liquid argon detectors is that they are caused by the diffusion of radioactive isotopes in a scintillator (liquid phase). This radioactive isotope is produced in argon’s surrounding devices, such as circulation pipelines and liquid argon containers. The solid argon as a scintillation material in the detector can inhibit the diffusion and drift of radioactive isotopes in a solid phase scintillator. Additionally, the structure of a solid argon detector is simple and reduces the total source of radioactive background. In the CDEX-300 detection system, solid argon could substitute for liquid argon as the veto detector, preventing radioactive isotopes drifting to the central main detector (HPGe detectors array) surface to reduce backgrounds. Therefore, solid argon has great potential in the experiments since it is especially helpful to get the lower background in a larger active volume than liquid argon required in those low background detection experiments. This work introduces the preparation process and device of the large volume transparent crystalline argon, the acquisition of scintillation light, and the pulse amplitude spectrum of 137Cs obtained from a prototype detector of transparent solid argon crystal. The results show that the scheme proposed in this study can successfully produce a large volume transparent crystalline argon detector, the scintillation light signals can be effectively obtained from the solid argon scintillator, and the corresponding pulse amplitude spectrum is given. This work indicates that it is feasible to develop a solid argon crystal scintillation detector by using our approach.