Study of the rare-earth-oxygen interaction in iron by lattice location and perturbed-angular- correlation experiments

In a study of the rare-earth-oxygen interaction in iron, lattice location and integral perturbed-angular-correlation experiments were performed after implantation of Yb and ${}_{}{}^{16}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{O}$ in iron single crystals and foils. The ion-implantation energies were chosen so that the depth profiles overlapped almost completely. A strong Yb-O interaction is evidenced in both types of experiments. However, its effects on channeling results and on hyperfine-interaction measurements are found to be entirely different: In the present case, the usually assumed simple corespondence between impurity lattice location and hyperfine-field values certainly does not hold. The results are discussed in the light of a simple statistical model for the interaction probability between rare-earth and oxygen atoms.