Speaker
Description
The Boulby Underground Laboratory features a world-class material screening facility dedicated to the radioassay of samples for rare-event particle physics research. This poster will introduce the Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS), one of a number of techniques employed at Boulby.
By using ion counting techniques, the ICP-MS determines the concentrations of U-238 and Th-232, providing a precise assessment of a material’s radiopurity. At Boulby we aim to push our standard detection limits to 100 parts-per-quadrillion (ppq) and even be able to push down to 10 ppq for specific materials. This information is vital for next-generation rare-event experiments, where it is imperative that radioactive backgrounds are understood to unprecedented accuracy.