Nuclear quadrupole interaction studies by perturbed angular correlations

Abstract

A comperhensive study was made of the applicability of gamma-ray angular correlations to the determination of quadrupole interactions in metals and insulating solids. Dynamic effects were studied in solutions and gases. A total of fourteen gamma-ray cascades were employed. Several nuclear spins were confirmed and the quadrupole moments of ten excited nuclear states were determined or estimated from the data. Quadrupole coupling constants were determined for excited states of the following nuclei in metallic host lattices of the same element: 44Sc, 99Ru, 111Cd, 117In, 187Re, 199Hg. Coupling constants were also measured for the following isotope (lattice) combinations: 99Ru(Zn, Cd, Sn, Sb), 100Rh(Zn, Ru, Cu5Zn8, Pd2Al, PdPb2), 111Cd(In, Hg, Tl, CdSb, Cd3Ag, Zn, Ga, In, Sn, Sb, Bi, AuIn, InBi, In2Bi), 115In(Cd), 117In(Cd, Sn), 131I(Te), 181Ta(HfB2, HfSi2), 204Pb(Cd, In, Sn, As, Sb, Bi, Hg, Tl, PdPb2). Systematic variations of e2qQ with host-lattice structure were observed and host and solute properties were found to be separable to some extent for nontransition metals. The nuclei 111Cd, 115In, 117In, 199Hg, and 204Pb were used to determine a total of fifty quadrupole coupling constants in insulators, including twenty with nonzero asymmetry parameters, which give oscillatory but aperiodic correlation functions. It was strikingly (and exhaustively) demonstrated that good determinations of quadrupole coupling constants could be made following isomeric transitions (IT) (with no elemental transmutation) and beta decay (with elemental transmutation). However, in no case was it possible to derive a coupling constant from a gamma-ray cascade preceded directly by electron-capture (EC) decay, presumably because the sudden creation of a K-hole, and the Auger and ``shake-off'' events that follow, destroy the chemical integrity of the species under study. Relaxation times were determined for a number of liquid samples. Studies of dimethyl-111mCd in various buffer gases showed that the spin memory was lost in one collision with heavy molecules, but that light molecules required several collisions.