4. Conclusion

This article describes in detail the technical characteristics of the chambers (design, choice of materials and equipment, vacuum technology, etc.) to achieve a vacuum quality compatible with the analytical requirements necessary for the purification and separation, under ultra-high vacuum, of noble gases extracted from geological samples.

Future improvements in purification methods are likely to be linked to technological advances in laboratory equipment, in particular :

• the surface quality of materials, which could be improved by new treatment procedures (chemical, mechanical, thermal, etc.) to reduce adsorption and/or outgassing of gaseous species in ultra-high vacuum chambers;

• turbomolecular pumping units by, for example, improving the gas compression ratio to reduce the gas flow...