Measurement of high-pressure xenon gas absorption in acrylic

TL;DR

This study quantitatively measures how high-pressure xenon gas is absorbed by acrylic, a material used in low-background detectors, revealing potential long-term stability concerns.

Contribution

The paper provides the first systematic measurement of xenon absorption into acrylic under high pressure, informing detector design considerations.

Findings

Xenon absorption amount is 0.98 g per 332 g of acrylic.

A specific experimental setup was developed for precise measurement.

Results highlight the importance of considering gas absorption in detector stability.

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.