An evaluation of the ITC technique in monitoring the relaxation behaviour of impurity-vacancy dipoles in monocrystalline sodium chloride

An evaluation of the ionic-thermocurrent technique has been performed by monitoring the relaxation of divalent impurity-cation vacancy dipoles formed from various dopants incorporated into monocrystalline sodium chloride. The observations have been compared with the predictions of the relaxation of a nearest-neighbour impurity-vacancy dipole. Investigation has also been made of the sensitivity of the technique to detecting a response from impurity-vacancy dipoles existing in a complexed or aggregated state.