Development and characterization of low-scattering vanadium nanoparticle targets for short-range interaction searches

Abstract

We developed high-purity vanadium-based nanoparticle targets for neutron scattering experiments aimed at exploring gravity-like short-range new interactions in the submicron regime. Vanadium and V-Ni nanoparticles were fabricated using top-down and bottom-up methods and quantitatively characterized by SEM-EDS, ICP-AES, NDIR and SAXS. Through the performance tests, an RF thermal plasma method was found to be the best from viewpoints of the reproducibility, dispersion of the radius, and contamination of metallic elements. The oxygen incorporation during fabrication was quantified, and its impact on the effective coherent scattering length was evaluated, leading to a minimum average coherent scattering length of 0.719(23) fm, comparable to that of natural vanadium. These results demonstrate that vanadium-based nanoparticle targets with controlled composition and nanostructure can be systematically designed and fabricated to suppress nuclear scattering backgrounds, thereby enabling experimentally viable coherent neutron scattering measurements for short-range interaction searches.