Ultra-Low-Background Copper Production and Clean Fabrication

Conference · Tue Nov 01 00:00:00 EST 2005

OSTI ID:881700

Aalseth, Craig E; Brodzinski, Ronald L; Farmer, O T; Hoppe, Eric W; Hossbach, Todd W; Miley, Harry S; Reeves, James H

Commercial high-purity copper is an attractive material for constructing ultra-low-background radiation measurement devices. When even higher purity is desired, additional electrolytic and chemical purification can be combined with the final fabrication step. This process results in ''electroformed'' copper parts of extreme purity. Copper electroforming can be done underground, providing a way to eliminate cosmogenic activation products seen in copper that has had above-ground exposure. A brief summary of the history, cosmogenics, process chemistry, cleaning, and passivation of this material is given. Examples of finished parts illustrate the method. The required infrastructure is summarized.

• Research Organization: Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: AC05-76RL01830
• OSTI ID: 881700
• Report Number(s): PNNL-SA-45365; NN2003000; TRN: US200613%%76
• Resource Relation: Conference: Topical Workshop on Low Radioactivity Techniques: LRT 2004 Sudbury, Ontario (Canada), 12-14 December 2004. , 785(1):170-176
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
CHEMISTRY
CLEANING
COPPER
FABRICATION
PASSIVATION
PRODUCTION
PURIFICATION
RADIATIONS
RADIOACTIVITY
Material purity cosmogenic electroforming clean spectrometer underground physics.