A comparative glance into the HAVAR alloy by PAS and TEM methods

The HAVAR alloy was originally developed in the late 1940. It is a high strength, nonmagnetic and corrosion resistant material. One of its applications is in the medical industry, in the process of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) production for Positron Emission Tomography (PET). The 18F positron emitting isotope is produced by the reaction 18O(p,n)18F in proton cyclotrons. In Soreq NRC, 25 µm foils of HAVAR are used as a window material for the 18O enriched water targets, contained in Al vessels. With the increasing demand for 18F-FDG, an accelerated production rate is planned, with much higher intense proton beam from the new SARAF accelerator at Soreq NRC [1]. This initiated a research effort to study radiation damage in HAVAR that can predict its radiation hardness in the ~2-4 mA SARAF proton beam.
We measured four 25 µm thick HAVAR samples: cold rolled (CR), cold rolled and heat treated (HT), annealed (AN) and CR irradiated (IR). The latter was a window taken apart from the target 7 years ago after irradiation in the cyclotron to 10MeV protons of total charge 1mA-h. The first three samples were metallurgically characterized by means of Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). Positron Annihilation Spectroscopy (PAS) measurements were preformed on all four samples. These included Doppler Broadening (DB) and Positron Annihilation Lifetime ( PAL) measurements in the slow positron beam and in the table top lifetime spectrometer at HZDR [2]. We present preliminary results from these PAS measurements, that show clear differences between the four samples. Positron lifetimes of the HAVAR types change between ~80ps for the annealed sample to ~175ps for the irradiated sample. The positron diffusion length changes from (8 ± 1) nm (CR) to (66 ± 1) nm (AN) in these samples. We also compare between the metallurgical characteristics of the different types of HAVAR measured with TEM to PAS results. The PAS measurements show a clear increase of the mean lifetime with the increase of the density of dislocations in the CR sample compared to that of AN HAVAR foils.

[1] L. Weissman et al., "The Status of the SARAF Linac Project", WE102 in Proceedings of Linac 2010, Tsukuba, September 12-17, 2010
[2] W. Anwand, H. - R. Kissener, and G. Brauer, Acta Phys. Pol. A 88, 7 (1995).