MEASUREMENT OF DIFFUSION OF IRON IN GOLD BY MEANS OF MOSSBAUER EFFECT

Iron diffusion in gold has been measured using the Mössbauer effect. Similar to earlier results on iron diffusion in copper, we find that the broadening of the Mössbauer line is approximately equal to /τ instead of 2/τ as predicted by the jump model of diffusion, where τ is the mean life for sitting in a specified lattice site. Since the broadening for both iron diffusion in gold and iron diffusion in copper is approximately a factor of two smaller than predicted theoretically, the results appear to be somewhat general. This lends support to the view that the relaxation of a specified ion out of a lattice site is not a simple exponential in time, as assumed in the theory, but is altered when the vacancy mechanism is responsible for diffusion. © 1968 The American Institute of Physics.