Release of Inert Gas Label from Discharge Treated Solids

Abstract

Abstract High frequency discharge treatment in xenon at low pressure is found to produce disordering in the surface layers of diamond, lithium fluoride, and magnesium hydroxide, and to create sites which can act as traps for the inert gas atoms during subsequent labeling. Experimental results indicate that the release of the inert gas label is a process which is distributed in activation energies, and that the activation energy spectrum for release can be obtained by recording the activity of the escaping gas in the course of tempering. The peaks observed in the tempering release curves are interpreted as being connected with the annealing of the original damage produced by the discharge treatment. It is found that the activation energies for release of krypton from discharge treated diamond and lithium fluoride agree with activation energies for annealing of damage produced by reactor irradiation. It is therefore concluded that disordering produced by ion bombardment during discharge treatment in the surface layers is similar in nature to the damage produced by reactor irradiation in the bulk of the solid.