title: An evaluation of thermal and epithermal neutron activation analysis compton suppression methods for biological reference materials.
abstract: For neutron activation analysis (NAA), the usual matrix problems of sodium, chlorine, and bromine are well known to give rise to high backgrounds that inhibit the determination of several trace elements for short-lived or medium-lived NAA. For long counting times in long-lived NAA, very low backgrounds are required to achieve good sensitivities. We have investigated the use of thermal and epithermal NAA in conjunction with Compton suppression to determine several elements such as arsenic, antimony, cadmium, and mercury, at the level of a few nanograms. The values of these techniques are discussed in contrast to the standard radiochemical methods.
authors.affiliation: Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab, University of Texas at Austin 78712, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Landsberger
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D001681:Biological Assay / Q000592:standards*; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D009501:Neutron Activation Analysis / Q000379:methods*; D012015:Reference Standards; D014131:Trace Elements / Q000032:analysis
chemical_list: D014131:Trace Elements