An aging study of wire chambers with dimethyl ether: effects of wire material and freon content

The authors report results on the aging of different types of resistive and non-resistive wires in wire chambers filled with dimethyl ether (DME) of varying degrees of purity. Among the Freon impurities detected in the DME batches, only Freon-11 was found to contribute to the aging process. Of the resistive wires, Nicotin and Stablohm produced fast aging, whereas stainless steel withstood extended irradiation in purified DME (up to 1 C/cm) without any apparent damage. Gold-plated tungsten and molybdenum wires produced results comparable to those of the stainless steel.<
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