Abstract
X-ray absorption technique (XANES and EXAFS) was applied to study the local structures of silica glasses before and after the irradiation in a nuclear reactor. Although our separate photoluminescence (PL) measurements clearly showed the different aspects about oxygen vacancies in these samples, i.e., at least the B2β type oxygen-deficient center exists as an intrinsic defect in the fused silica glass while another type B2α center is formed in the synthesized silica glass, such differences did not directly reflect on the X-ray absorption spectra (XANES and EXAFS). However, the curve-fitting analysis of EXAFS showed that the number of oxygen atoms coordinated to Si relatively increased after the irradiation. This result may indicate the occurrence of the structural relaxation in the irradiated samples, that is, a slightly distorted SiO4 tetrahedra in silica glasses relaxed to the regular SiO4 tetrahedra due to the break of some connections between SiO4 units in the silica glasses. Thus, the X-ray absorption technique gave the important information of the in-reactor irradiated silica glasses which complements the results obtained from PL measurements.
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