How is neutron activation used by the police

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Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume This article was originally published in. Oxford Academic. Google Scholar. Among these are liquids generally , materials highly corrosive to stainless steel or aluminum, materials that react violently with water, explosives and highly flammable substances, and materials that pose exceptional danger to humans. Approximately 65 elements can be determined at levels ranging from parts-per-million to parts-per-trillion or below.

If the matrix to be analyzed does not become too radioactive when activated with neutrons, or if the unwanted radioactivity decays quickly, then groups of trace elements can often be measured simultaneously.

Examples of multi-element NAA are given below. Personnel of the NAA laboratory have considerable experience in the forensic analysis of evidentiary materials. Bullet fragments, gunshot residue, plastic, hair and fingernails, and geological materials are included among recent examples. Comparing materials nondestructively is a chief advantage of NAA for forensics. Materials such as high-purity silica, silicon, aluminum, other materials and their compounds that do not form long-lived radionuclides, cellulose air filters, as well as graphite are excellent matrices for high-sensitivity NAA.

Such materials can be irradiated in graphite rabbits for many hours in PT-1 for determinations of many elements at the sub-ppb level. Silicon wafers and SiO2 used in fiber optics are examples that have been analyzed.

Extremely low quantities of certain elements such as Ir can be measured utilizing microwave digestion facilities available at ORNL and straightforward chemical separation techniques. Single Crystal Diffraction Suite. Issue Date : February Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Summary Police investigations of the Italian Ministry of Treasury Police involving the illicit sale of tobacco lead to the confiscation of large quantities of smuggled cigarettes.

Brandone Authors L. Giordani View author publications.