Heterogeneous losses of externally generated I atoms for OIL

Abstract

Usage of an external iodine atom generator can improve energy efficiency of the oxygen-iodine laser (OIL) and expand its range of operation parameters. However, a noticeable part of iodine atoms may recombine or undergo chemical bonding during transportation from the generator to the injection point. Experimental results reported in this paper showed that uncoated aluminum surfaces readily bounded iodine atoms, while nickel, stainless steel, Teflon or Plexiglas did not. Estimations based on experimental results had shown that the upper bound of probability of surface iodine atom recombination for materials Teflon, Plexiglas, nickel or stainless steel is γ rec ≤ 10 -5 .