Positron annihilation in fatigued copper

Abstract

Positron lifetimes have been measured in an isochronal annealing study of dynamically fatigued, high purity Cu single crystals. Decomposition of the lifetime spectra into two components results in a description of the annealing process in terms of the lifetime and fraction of trapped positrons. Positron lifetimes were also determined at a series of low temperatures (10–300 K) at different stages of annealing. The lifetime of positrons trapped at point defects is found to vary with temperature indicating that a description of the trapping process according to a simple diffusion limited model is not applicable.