Dr. Florian Jörg – Coating based radon barriers for future rare event searches

Liquid noble gas detectors, particularly those utilizing xenon, are a powerful tool for rare event searches such as for the neutrinoless double beta decay and dark matter interactions. They require environments with minimal radioactive backgrounds, and in particular must meet very stringent constraints on the emanation of Rn-222 from material surfaces.

This work presents a novel approach to radon suppression through the application of coating-based radon barriers. In particular, the electrodeposition of copper has shown to reduce radon release by a thousandfold using a custom-made stainless steel radon source produced via implantation of Ra-226 at the ISOLDE facility at CERN. This presentation will also cover the technique’s scalability for larger applications and provides an initial assessment of the coating layers’ intrinsic radiopurity.