Fast neutron radiation damage in aluminium studied by interstitial trapping at57Co Mossbauer atoms

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Abstract
A description is given of Mossbauer studies of interstitial atom trapping at 57Co impurities in Al after fast neutron irradiation at 4.6K with doses from 0.2*1018 n cm-2. Trapping and detrapping during irradiation and during subsequent isochronal annealing was detected directly by the appearance and development of an additional Mossbauer line due to 57Co atoms with trapped interstitials. Simultaneous electrical resistivity measurements on the Mossbauer samples allowed the novel information from the Mossbauer studies to be correlated with the well known annealing stages of the resistivity. The isomer shift of the additional Mossbauer line was +0.42 mm s-1 relative to 57Co on substitutional sites, its small quadrupole splitting was 0.17 mm s-1. From irradiation dose and annealing temperature dependence it was concluded that trapping starts during irradiation at 4.6K and continues when interstitials are freely mobile (stage IE). Detrapping occurs by vacancy migration to the trapped interstitials (stage III).