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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Baojun Liu, Nazir P. Kherani, Stefan Zukotynski, Armando B. Antoniazzi, Kevin P. Chen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 627-630
Technical Paper | Process Applications | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1893
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We report on a simple and versatile method for the integration of tritium in semiconductor materials. A variety of semiconductor materials are exposed to tritium (T2) gas at pressures of up to 120 bar and temperatures of up to 250 °C. Tritiated materials include hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), crystalline silicon (c-Si), silica and carbon nanotubes (CNT). Deep ultra-violet laser irradiation was used to lock tritium in silica films. Effusion measurements show the presence of stable tritium in silicon, silica and CNTs up to 400 °C. IR absorption spectra show a Si-T stretching mode at 1200 cm-1 indicating the formation of stable Si-T bonds in a-Si:H. SIMS measurements show that the penetration depth of tritium in a-Si:H and c-Si is 150 and 10 nm, respectively; the concentration of tritium locked in a-Si:H and c-Si is 20 and 4 at.%, respectively. In tritiated silica, 248-nm UV laser irradiation locks the permeated tritium at stable chemical bonding sites in the silica lattice. Thermal effusion measurement shows that 0.5 wt.% tritium can be stably immobilized in CNTs. The application of tritiated silicon as a cold electron source is demonstrated.