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| Title: | PROGRESS ON THE STUDY OF ISOTOPIC COMPOSITION IN METALLIC THIN FILMS UNDERGONE TO ELECTROCHEMICAL LOADING OF HYDROGEN | |
| DOI No: | 10.1142/9789812772985_0026 | |
| Source: | CONDENSED MATTER NUCLEAR SCIENCE (pp 264-271) | |
| Author(s): | M. APICELLA
ENEA Frascati Research Center, V. le E. Fermi 45, 00044 Frascati (Roma), Italy V. VIOLANTE ENEA Frascati Research Center, V. le E. Fermi 45, 00044 Frascati (Roma), Italy F. SARTO ENEA Casaccia Research Center, V. Anguillarese 301, 00060 S.Maria di Galeria, (Roma), Italy A. ROSADA ENEA Casaccia Research Center, V. Anguillarese 301, 00060 S.Maria di Galeria, (Roma), Italy E. SANTORO ENEA Casaccia Research Center, V. Anguillarese 301, 00060 S.Maria di Galeria, (Roma), Italy E. CASTAGNA La Sapienza University, Via Scarpa, 14, 00100 (Roma), Italy C. SIBILIA La Sapienza University, Via Scarpa, 14, 00100 (Roma), Italy M. MCKUBRE SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA F. TANZELLA SRI International, 333 Ravenswood Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA G. HUBLER Naval Research Laboratory, 4555 Overlook Ave., S.W. Washington, DC 20375, USA |
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| Abstract: | A research activity has started some years ago in the framework of collaboration between the ENEA (Italy) and the SRI (USA), aimed to the identification of traces of nuclear reactions in condensed matter. This work has also involved cross-linked analysis in order to identify effects due to contaminants that could affect the isotopic shift estimate. Nickel thin films have been sputtered on a polymeric substrate and loaded with hydrogen by electrolysis. Reference and active thin films have been prepared contemporaneously during the same sputtering process to have on both the same deposition and the same impurities composition. Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) has been used to analyze the isotopic composition of the electrolyzed and blank substrates. Preliminary results (Violante et al., Proc. 10th Int. Conf. Cold Fusion (ICCF-10), Cambridge, 2003) indicated that a reasonable reproducible apparent shift of the isotopic composition of the Cu element occurred in some of the electrolyzed films, with an increasing of mass 65, while the natural value was always observed for all the blank samples. Cu was particularly suitable for being used as a marker elements because of its only two mass isotopes (63/65) that do not overlap with isotopes of other elements having the same masses. In this work, new experiments have been reproduced to increase the statitistics and further analysis has been performed in order to exclude that the revealed shift was traceable to an artifact.These included SIMS scanning of the sample surface, depth profile analysis by SIMS, mass spectrometric analysis of the electrolyte, SUPER-SIMS [2] analysis of one couple of reference and active films. In particular, the possible contribution from mass interferences on the 65-mass extra-signal has been considered, coming from contaminants or double ionized species. On the basis of the new results, a more complex scenario has been evidenced, suggesting that the former attribution of the Cu63/Cu65 isotopic shift could be not correct. The indication of new experiments and tests that potentially should provide a complete understanding of the present results has been given. The work wants to stress that the identification of elemental transmutations in metal hydrides is an extremely complex topic, which necessitate of severe scientific accuracy, cross-matched analysis, multidisciplinary expertise, and the access to top performance experimental facilities. All these requirements can be fulfilled only in the framework of top-level international scientific collaboration. | |
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