#10: The Discovery of Hydrogen Isotopes

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Figure 1- Three Known Isotopes of Hydrogen [2] Deuterium and Tritium both have very significant applications in today’s world, which will be discussed later in this paper. Deuterium Deuterium is very similar to 1-Hydrogen (Protium) in that it bonds similarly and is stable. Deuterium, can bond with oxygen to form “heavy water”, which is similar to water only 10% heavier. An Interesting property of heavy water is that heavy ice (heavy water solid) is denser than water, sinking, depicted in Figure 2. Although Deuterium is very similar to Protium, they do have some distinct physical properties which are due to the relative large difference in mass. For instance, deuterium has a boiling point 3 degrees higher than Protium and reacts slower. Figure 2-Glass of water with floating ice and sinking heavy ice (D 2 O) [3] Extraction Canada is the world’s supplier of heavy water. Heavy water isn’t manufactured but rather extracted from natural quantity found in lakes (0.015% of H). Previous extraction methods suggested performing electrolysis, running an electric current to drive a non-spontaneous reaction. The electrolysis 2 Hydrogen Isotope Picture- http://education.jlab.org/glossary/isotope.html 3 http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2006-07/ice-capades
decomposed the water to Oxygen and Hydrogen gas, and due to deuterium larger mass and higher boiling temperature, the heavy hydrogen is found at the remaining one-millionth volume [4] . This method works, however it isn’t cost efficient and therefore isn’t promising on a large scale extraction. The plant in Canada directly separates heavy water from water by the use of hydrogen sulphide as an agent [5] , see Figure 3. Figure 3- Heavy Water Extraction Plant in Canada Application Deuterium has many useful applications and due to its unlimited availability (from lakes and oceans) and cheap extraction methods, looks promising. One application noteworthy is the strengthening of silicon microchips by Deuterium, discovered by Joe Lyding and Karl Hess at the Beckman Institute’s for Advanced Science and Technology, University of Illinois. Prior to their discovery, the silicon microchips were treated with hydrogen gas during the annealing process (a form of heat treatment used on metals in order to soften it, relieving internal stresses thereby making it easier to machine [6] ). Researchers at the Beckman Institute discovered a simple yet important discovery, instead of treating the chip with hydrogen, deuterium is used which dramatically increases the strength and prolongs the life of the chip. How is the microchip strengthened by the deuterium replacing the hydrogen First let’s look at the microchip with hydrogen, so far the use of hydrogen as a protective agent has been standardized in technological silicon microchips. The problem with the hydrogen is that energetic electrons passing through the microchip have enough energy to knock the hydrogen atoms out, thus decreasing the performance and life time, being a concern for future smaller microchips. The researchers discovered that by using heavy hydrogen as the protective agent in the microchip will strengthen it by 10-50 times. The deuterium atoms can withstand the energetic electrons thus improving the microchip’s performance and reliability of the microchips [7] . 4 Deuterium Extraction by Electrolysis- http://www.britannica.com/nobelprize/article-9435309 5 Heavy Water- http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/sno/D2O.html 6 Oxford Dictionary of Physics 7 Deuterium in Silicon microchips, clip- http://www.youtube.com/watchv=w9dHeUzwOfI&feature=related
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Page 5: Production Tritium occurs naturally

#10: The Discovery of Hydrogen Isotopes

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