Measurement of high-pressure xenon gas absorption in acrylic

Abstract

Acrylic is a popular structural material in experiments requiring low background because of its radio-purity, machinability, and mechanical strength. However, its porosity may cause significant gas absorption and influence the detector stability in the long term. The interaction between acrylic and other detector materials becomes one of the key concerns in the detector design. In this paper, we carry out an experiment to measure quantitatively the absorption process of high-pressure xenon gas into acrylic. A specific setup is designed for the measurement, and systematic measurements are done to obtain a result of the absorption amount: 0.98 g xenon into 332 g of acrylic.

Calibration of a Micromegas-based gaseous time projection chamber using cosmic ray muons

“…Gas impurities, especially electronegative ones, absorb the drift electrons, resulting in a so-called attachment effect that degrades the detector performance. As our detector is hermetic, the main contribution of gas impurities is from the outgassing inside the detector [21,22]. Continuous purification with a circulation loop is necessary to reduce contamination levels.…”