Heat-Pipe Oven: A New, Well-Defined Metal Vapor Device for Spectroscopic Measurements

A new, well-defined metal vapor device called the heat-pipe oven has been developed on the basis of the heat pipe, a heat conductive element designed by Grover and his co-workers in Los Alamos. It continuously generates homogeneous vapors of well-defined temperature, pressure, and optical path length. The vapor is confined by inert gas boundaries which remove the window problem and allow a direct pressure measurement without relying on vapor pressure curves. Due to the continuous evaporation and condensation the vapor purifies itself during operation.