Visualization of the accurate distribution of trace uranium in environmental sample using superconducting technology

Yomogida, Takumi   ; Yamada, Shinya*; Takahashi, Yoshio*

This article explains the recent research being carried out by our group on the application of superconducting transition edge sensors (TES) to detectors for synchrotron radiation X-ray analysis. We applied a TES spectrometer as a detector for microbeam X-ray measurements to determine uranium (U) distribution at the micro-scale and its chemical species in biotite obtained from the U mine. When using a conventional semiconductor detector, the X-ray fluorescence peaks of Rb and U overlap with each other due to the shortage of energy resolution. The conventional semiconductor detector could only observe the fluorescence X-ray of Rb K line, which is abundant in biotite, and could not accurately detect the signal of trace amounts of U. Meanwhile, the XRF peak of the U L line was fully separated from that of the Rb K line by using TES, which indicates that TES made it possible to perform ultra-high energy resolution analysis.