Applications of high energy ion beam techniques in environmental science: Investigation associated with glass and ceramic waste forms

High energy ion beam capabilities including Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) and nuclear reaction analysis (NRA) have been very effectively used in environmental science to investigate the ion-exchange mechanisms in glass waste forms and the effects of irradiation in glass and ceramic waste forms in the past. In this study, RBS and NRA along with SIMNRA simulations were used to monitor the Na depletion and D and ¹⁸O uptake in alumina silicate glasses, respectively, after the glass coupons were exposed to aqueous solution. These results show that the formation of a reaction layer and an establishment of a region where diffusion limited ion exchange occur in these glasses during exposure to silica-saturated solutions. Different regions including reaction and diffusion regions were identified on the basis of the depth distributions of these elements. In the case of ceramics, damage accumulation was studied as a function of ion dose at different irradiation temperatures. A sigmoidal dependence of relative disorder on the ion dose was observed. The defect-dechanneling factors were calculated for two irradiated regions in SrTiO₃ using the critical angles determined from the angular yield curves. The dependence of defect-dechanneling parameter on the incident energy was investigated and it was observed that the generated defects are mostly interstitial atoms and amorphous clusters. Thermal recovery experiments were performed to study the damage recovery processes up to a maximum temperature of 870 K.