Head of the Centre of Applied Physics of the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions at JINR Pavel Apel, in collaboration with scientists from the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National University of Science and Technology, conducted a research on the specifics of chemical etching of quartz glass under the influence of accelerated heavy xenon ions.

10 × 5 × 4 mm³ KU-2 quartz glass sample prepared for irradiation

In an article on this study, scientists presented the first results of testing KU-2 optical quartz glass as a detector of accelerated heavy ions. The results of etching the irradiated glasses in hydrofluoric acid indicate a possibility of their use for detecting superheavy nuclei and their decay products.

The results of the work were published in Bulletin of the Lebedev Physics Institute in June 2024.