Cyclic neutron activation analysis of biological and metallurgical samples

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
A rapid pneumatic transfer cyclic system for use with the SLOWPOKE reactor has been designed which allows detection of nuclides with half-lives as short as 0.8 s. Reliable reproducibility is achieved with a 1 s transfer period from reactor to detector. Both accuracy and relative standard deviation are significantly improved with some matrices as the number of cycles is increased but the gains in detection limits increase with the square root of the number of cycles. Cyclic instrumental neutron activation analysis has been successfully applied to the determination of Ag, F, Hf, Pb, Rb, Sc, and Se in a variety of biological and metallurgical matrices. The detection limits ranged from 0.01 to 2.2 ppm for all elements studied except Pb.