Working Group Team
- Lucio Gialanella
- Fabio Marzaioli
- Raffaele Buompane
- Claudio Santonastaso
- Maria Lucia Mitsou
Tandem Accelerator @CIRCE
The group’s activities are dedicated to the analysis of materials under conditions comparable to those experienced during field measurements. The activities are based at CIRCE-DMF laboratory of University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli” that hosts several laboratory some of which are involved in the materials research for the KM3NeT collaboration. Namely, the IRMS laboratory and Tandem Accelerator Laboratory (TAL) based on isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) and a 3 MV electrostatic tandem accelerator respectively.
In a first step, we studied the water infiltration rates in the VEOC, glass and MIDEL oil.
The water infiltration rates in the MIDEL oil were analyzed using Electorn impact- quadrupole mass spectrometry. This first phase of analysis developed a method for quantifying the water content in MIDEL oil and defined a pre-treatment procedure for removing excess water from the oil. The infiltration rates of water into the VEOC and glass were studied using Ion Beam Analysis (IBA) techniques and in particular Nuclear Reaction Analysis (NRA), which uses accelerated ion beams and detects the signal from nuclear reactions induced in the sample. The sample was exposed to high pressure in a dedicated hyperbaric chamber containing deuterated water to improve the cross section of the nuclear reaction and thus the sensitivity of the technique. The same setup will be used to study the optical properties of the DOM glass in order to better determine their possible variation over time during data acquisition.
In a second step, a more sensitive method was used to estimate water infiltration rates, based on isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) measurements. A method based on the introduction of isotopically labelled materials was developed and validated.
The developed techniques and methods will be applied for the measurement of water infiltration rates in real assembled parts (DOM, VEOC) at pressures comparable to those experienced during field data collection by short-term exposure in a new large-volume hyperbaric chamber.