Effect of irradiation on the laws of annealing of impurity hardening of NaCl crystals

Abstract

Studies were carried out on crystals containing various types of impurity: Ca²⁺, a hole-acceptor impurity, which dissolves well in NaCl; and Pb²⁺, an electronacceptor impurity, which dissolves poorly in NaCl. For the first time when doped crystals were annealed softening was observed to occur as a result of irradiation with soft x-rays prior to the annealing. The microhardness of irradiated doped NaCl crystals drops below the value that corresponds to the unannealed unirradiated sample. This effect is more pronounced in NaCl:Pb. It is postulated that the weakening effect is due to the breakup of impurity complexes. This assumption is supported by the results of studies on the laws governing the annealing of dislocation structures about the imprints of an indenter. These laws are shown to depend on the type of impurity: processes of dislocation polygonization were observed in NaCl:Ca crystals and the dislocation distribution was random in NaCl:Pb crystals. Pre-irradiation of the latter caused dislocations to be built in and polygonization to appear. Evidently, by breaking up impurity complexes in NaCl:Pb crystals x-ray irradiation brings the state of the impurity in them closer to that in NaCl:Ca.