Determination of hydrogen concentration in solids by transmission ERDA under nuclear-elastically enhanced recoiling of H by 8 and 9 MeV He

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a method to accurately measure hydrogen content in solids using transmission ERDA with nuclear-elastically enhanced recoiling, relying solely on material data without reference samples.

Contribution

It introduces a transmission ERDA analysis procedure based on stopping power and recoil cross section data, eliminating the need for reference samples of known hydrogen content.

Findings

Hydrogen concentrations in polyphenylene sulfide and muscovite were accurately determined.

Results agree well with calculated and other analytical methods.

The method is effective for materials and minerals analysis.

Abstract

Hydrogen concentrations in thin self-supporting samples of polyphenylene sulfide and muscovite have been determined by nuclear-elastic recoil detection analysis of transmission layout. The analysis procedure is based only on the database of stopping power and recoil cross section for material analysis, without using any reference sample of known H content. For the polyphenylene sulfide sample, the determined value of $(2.87\pm 0.26)\times 10^{22}\,{\rm H}/$cm$^{3}$ is in good agreement with the calculated value of $3.01 \times 10^{22}\,{\rm H}/$cm$^{3}$. For the muscovite sample, the H concentration originating each from bound water and absorbed water is uniform over the entire thickness of the sample. The determined concentration $(9.43 \pm 0.75) \times 10^{21}$ H$/$cm$^{3}$ of the muscovite agrees excellently with the value of $9.36 \times 10^{21}$ H$/$cm$^{3}$ obtained from other quantitative analyses typically applied for minerals. The present results demonstrate the capability of accurate determination of H contents in materials and minerals by transmission ERDA.