Profiting of some of the efforts of the Xelidon experiment at end of 80’s, DAMA/LXe was started in 1990 and has preliminarily realized several protypes.

The final choice has been a pure liquid Xenon scintillator of ~ 6.5 kg filled with Kr-free Xenon enriched in ¹²⁹Xe at 99.5%, which – after preliminary published measurements – was deeply upgraded at end 1995.

A further relevant upgrading was performed in summer 2000. Since then both Kr-free Xenon enriched in ¹²⁹Xe and Kr-free Xenon enriched in ¹³⁶Xe can alternatively fill the inner vessel.

After the official forbiddeness of using cryogenic liquids in the underground laboratories occurred in 2004, the set-up was in standby waiting for the restarting of the LNGS cooling water plant and of the local water refrigeration system. We profited from this period to perform several upgrades of this apparatus. Finally, thanks to a new chiller system and to the restoring of the use of water plans deep underground, the DAMA/LXe set-up restarted its normal operation in December 2007.

As planned in 2018 the set-up has been decommissioned.

A description of the set-up and its main feautures has been given e.g. in NIMA482 (2002), 728.

Photos of DAMA/LXe set-up can be found here.