Diffusion of Xe in Ta, Zr, and Pt

Abstract

The diffusion-limited release of radioactive 120Xe ( T 1 / 2 = 40 m ) from several thin metal foils abruptly heated to temperatures of order 1000 °C while in a vacuum is characterized and interpreted in terms of impurity atom diffusion coefficients. The 120Xe impurities were produced in situ from the decay of 120Cs implanted into Ta, Pt, and Zr foils from a 30 keV mass-separated ion beam. The temperature dependence of the diffusion coefficients extracted from our data is well described by Arrhenius relations, for which best-fit parameters are presented. The fastest release of 120Xe for a given set of implantation conditions and temperature is observed for Zr, although its reactivity may prove problematic for its use as a catcher foil. A number of convenient analytic formulae for the diffusion-limited release of impurity atoms are presented.