Radiopurity measurements of aluminum, copper and selenium materials for underground experiments and mass spectrometry development

Abstract

Natural thorium and uranium found in construction components of underground experiments can significantly contribute to detector background. Here we present the determination of 232Th and 238U in selected selenium, aluminum and copper materials, exploiting a highly effective chromatography method based on the TRU Resin and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. While selenium samples as isotope sources were analyzed for the purpose of the SuperNEMO experiment, the results of aluminum and copper samples have been used for development of accelerator mass spectrometry for ultra-sensitive radiopurity analyses of construction materials. Semi-quantitative analysis was also conducted for some selenium and aluminum materials.