SEDL / STP / STP341-EB / STP41742S

Structure of Displacement Cascades Produced by Neutron Irradiation

Van Lint, V. A. J.
John Jay Hopkins Laboratory for Pure and Applied Science, San Diego, Calif.

Pages: 13    Published: Jan 1963

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Abstract

Experiments have been performed to measure the range-energy relation for recoiling atoms in solids. Recoiling atoms with energies between 10 and 500 kev have been produced as a result of photonuclear reactions, such as (γ,n), (γ,p), and (γ,α). In addition to receiving kinetic energy by recoiling from the particle emission, the atoms are transmuted and thus can be detected by radiochemical techniques. These experiments have indicated roughly an E^0.7 relation for the range and have shown that the average scattering angle for the particles is small enough that they retain most of the memory of their initial direction of motion.

Analytical studies have also been conducted, based on an exponentially screened Coulomb potential between two atoms. Scattering cross-sections have been calculated by numerical means, and a Monte Carlo computer program has been used for following the history of slowing-down atoms in a solid, for mass ratios between moving and target atoms both equal to unity and appreciably different from unity.

The experimental data are in agreement with calculations based on the best available interatomic-potential functions.