THE ROLE OF RAPIDLY DIFFUSING DIMERS IN OXYGEN LOSS AND THE ASSOCIATION OF THERMAL DONORS WITH SMALL OXYGEN CLUSTERS

The loss of interstitial oxygen from solution is shown to exhibit seco nd order kinetics provided dimer dissociation is not significant at th e anneal temperature. Measured changes in the kinetics of the process for anneals at T greater than or equal to 450 degrees C can be explain ed by the increasing effect of this dissociation provided dimers diffu se much more rapidly than isolated atoms and are trapped efficiently. The magnitude of the changes indicates that weakly bound clusters are responsible for this trapping. The formation of two seperate series of oxygen clusters containing odd and even numbers of oxygen atoms would be a consequence of clustering by dimer addition. The assignment of t hermal donors to the odd-numbered series is suggested.