Electron-beam vapor sources are now widely used in material processing sciences and coating technologies, such as the semiconductor industry for producing aluminum films on Si wafers; the metallurgical industry for melting, evaporating, and refining metals; and at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for vaporizing metals for laser isotope separation applications. Power for these sources ranges from the kW regime in the semiconductor industry to the multi-MW regime in laser separation technology. Operations of these sources can generate copious amounts of x rays by the direct and indirect interactions of the energetic electrons with the target materials. In this paper, we present the results of our calculations regarding the x-ray emission intensity, angular intensity and energy spectrum distribution, and shielding characteristics for vapor sources with acceleration voltages from 10 kV to 60 kV. 4 refs., 12 figs., 2 tabs.

To study the reaction of water vapour with uranium, we have exposed clean liquid uranium surfaces to H/sub 2/O under UHV conditions. We have measured the surface concentration of oxygen as a function of exposure, and determined the maximum attainable surface oxygen concentration X/sup s//sub O/ as a function of temperature. We have used these measurements to estimate, close to the melting point, the solubility of oxygen (X/sup b//sub O/, < 10/sup -4/) and its surface segregation coefficient ..beta../sup s/(> 10/sup 3/). 11 refs., 5 figs.