engleski

Mitigating carbon contamination in heavy ion irradiation

One of the obstacles in emulating neutron irradiation effects by heavy ions is the possibility of contaminating the samples with excess carbon during irradiation. Such a change in the chemical composition is extremely undesirable as it affects the structural properties studied in these experiments, and it does not correspond to reactor conditions. In this study we examine the carbon contamination in the DiFU chamber at RBI and different methods for its mitigation. Silicon samples were irradiated with iron ions at room temperature with different doses and energies and the resulting carbon profiles were studied using NRA and SIMS. The use of a cold trap along with plasma cleaning of both the chamber and samples is compared to irradiations without such methods. A residual gas analyzer is also employed to determine the quality of vacuum and the presence of possible hydrocarbon contaminants in various conditions.

ion irradiation ; carbon contamination ; fusion materials

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