Is channeling of fission tracks taking place?

A single crystal of natural zircon which is sliced to have (010) basal plan e and thinned by ion thinning is electron microscopically observed after sl ow neutron irradiation to ascertain whether channeling of the nuclear fissi on fragments is taking place or not. A fairly large number of the induced f ission tracks are recognized at low magnification images where a considerab le number of them are parallel to low-index lattice planes such as 100, 001 , 101, 301, 103 though their directions changed some time up to several deg rees. High resolution images of fission tracks often show a variety of zigz ag passing of the tracks along low-index lattice planes in atomistic level. The rate of the tracks which are parallel to these low-index lattice plane s is fairly high as about 45%, which strongly suggests that channeling of t he fission tracks is taking place.