Determination of Activation Energy of the Iron Acceptor Pair Association and Dissociation Reaction

Abstract

A method to measure the reaction rates of the iron acceptor pair association and dissociation is presented and applied. The activation energies of the dissociation and association reaction are determined for the acceptors boron, aluminum, gallium and indium. Additionally, the activation energies are reported for different illumination intensities. It is found that the activation energy of the association reaction varies for the investigated acceptors and that the activation energy of the dissociation reaction depends strongly on the illumination intensity. It is shown that neglecting of the dissociation reaction in the evaluation of relative interstitial iron content decrease causes a considerable overestimation of the activation energy of the iron acceptor association.