Subject: Miley's paper Abstract, Introduction, and Conclusion of Miley's report. Scanned it. Body was left out as it was to long. .............................................................................. ............... Preprint prepared for 2nd Intematlonai Conference on Low Energy Nudear Reactions, Texas A & M, College Station Texas, September 13-14, 1996. NUCLEAR TRANSMUTATIONS IN THIN-FILM NICKEL COATINGS UNDERGOING ELECTROLYSIS George H. Miley, Fusion Studies Laboratory, U. of Illinois 103 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801-2984 Ph. 217-333-3772, Fax 217-333-2906 E-mail: g-miley@uiuc.edu James A. Patterson Clean Energy Technology, Inc. Dallas, TX 75240 ABSTRACT Experiments using 1-mm plastic and glass microspheres coated withsingle and multilayers of thin films of various metals such as palladium and nickel, used in a packed-bed electrolytic cell (Patterson Power Cell Tm Configuration), have apparently produced a variety of nuclear reaction products. The analysis of a run with 650-A film of Ni is presented here. Following a two-week electrolytic run, the Ni film was found to contain Fe, Ag, Cu, Mg, and Cr, in concentrations exceeding 2 atom % each, plus a number of additional trace elements. These elements were at the most, only present in the initial film and the electrolyte plus other accessible cell components in much smaller amounts. That fact, combined with other data, such as deviations from natural isotope abundances, seemingly eliminates the alternate explanation of impurities concentrating in the film. A 1-molar lithium sulfate solution in light water was employed for the electrolyte. A small excess heat of approximately 0.5 +- 0.4 watts was recorded throughout the run. Reaction products were analyzed using a combination of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), Auger electron spectrometry (AES), energy dispersive x-ray (EDX) analysis, and neutron activation analysis (NAA). Results showing a broad array of products such as found here have also been obtained with thin film coatings of other materials, e.g., Pd and multi-layers of Pd and Ni. The yields of the major elements contributing depend on the film material, however. Some of that work is still being analyzed and will be presented at ICCF-6 (Miley and Patterson, 1996a). The array of products found in these experiments is consistent with recent studies of solid Pd and Au electrodes by Mizuno et al. 1996 and Ohmori and Enyo, 1996, respectively. A distinct advantage of thin electrode construction used here, however, is that the reaction zone becomes well defined, enabling quantitative measurements of the amounts of various products. To explain the observation of products with atomic numbers both well above and below Ni, a reaction model is being developed that involves proton-induced excited complexes, followed in some cases by a fission of the unstable compound nucleus. INTRODUCTION Various nuclear transmutation products generated during electrolytic cell operation, typically employing Pd and heavy or light water with various electrolytes such as Na2 CO3 and LI(OH), have previously been reported, e.g., see the proceedings of the first conference in this series (Bochris and Lin, 1996). Most of these reports have dealt with impurity level quantities of specific elements, such as Sr, Rb or tritium, although some workers, such as Mizuno et al., 1996, Ohmorl and Enyo, 1996, and Karabut et al., 1991 and 1992 report a wide variety of isotopes occurring at impurity levels. Several investigators, e.g., Miles and Bush, 1994, have concentrated on 4He, which they view as a logical reaction product for nuclear reactions in solids. While the occurrence of this number of independent observations strongly implies that chemically assisted nuclear reactions in solids are possible, the quantification and the credibility of the results have suffered from low, impurity-level yields and non-reproducibility. In sharp contrast, the thin (<2000A) films used in present work result in transmutation of a significant percentage of the metal in the thin-film cathode due to the "small" number of host atoms. (While, as stressed later, impurity contributions can not be completely ruled out, the term "transmutation products" is used here due to the overwhelming evidence in favor of this identification.) Over a dozen experiments with various types of thin-film coatings have been carried out in different cells (Miley and Patterson, 1996a). Thin-film coatings on 1 mm-diameter plastic/glass microspheres, ranging from 500-A-thick single layers of Pd or Ni to multiple Ni/Pd layers, were used in a flowing packed-bed-type electrolytic cell with a 1 -molar Li2 SO4 light water electrolyte. Nuclear reaction products were obtained in all cases, with several runs resulting in over 40 atomic % of the original coating materials being transmuted to reaction products such as Fe, Si, Mg, Cu, Cr, Zn, and Ag. The present paper deals with the specific case of a single nickel thin film, since it has been analyzed most thoroughly to date and appears to be representative of the behavior observed in the other runs. The "normal" Patterson Power Ceil Tm employs electrolytically coated layers of Ni and Pd on microspheres, and this composition has been extensively studied for power production (Patterson 1996a). The Ni-coated thin film microspheres described here were developed explicitly for reaction product studies, although power production with "conventional" thick Ni electrodes in light water cells has been widely studied (e.g., see 1. Myers et al. 1996 and references therein). The use of thin-film coatings originates from the "swimming electron layer" (SEL) theory proposed eariier (Hora, Miley, et al., 1993; Miley et al, 1993; Miley et al., 1994), which suggests that nuclear reactions are assisted by the use of multilayer thin films with alternating metals that have large differences in Fermi energy levels. The resulting increase in electron density at the film interface is shown to "squeeze" excess electrons between ions, greatly reducing the Coulambic barrier, thus enhancing nuclear reactions. This theory was first studied using thin- film Pd/Ti coatings sputtered onto a large stainless steel substrate electrode (Miley et al., 1994). Those experiments were terminated due to flaking of the films off of the electrode soon after loading and heating occurred. However the results were very encouraging, since high excess heat (estimated to be kW/cm3 at the interface regions) was observed for minutes prior to the disintegration of the thin films. Subsequently, J. Patterson (1 996a) developed a unique electrode configuration using electrochemical deposition of relatively thick (mm) coatings of Ni/Pd layers on millimeter diameter cross-linked polymer microspheres. These microspheres were then employed in a flowing packed-bed-type electrolytic cell (Patterson Power Cell Tm). The coatings, while thicker than the earlier thin-film studies, were found to be quite stable in this configuration, so experiments with thin films (300- to 2000-A thick) on such microspheres were undertaken in the present work. The thin films were laid down using a special sputtering process (Miley, Name, et al., 1996), where the microspheres are suspended in a fluidized state during the spraying process. The metallurgy of the films themselves has been studied before and after electrolysis, using both Auger electron probe techniques and electron microscopic surface analysis. Reaction product measurements have utilized a combination of secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS), Energy Dispersive x-ray (EDX) analysis, Auger Electron Spectroscopy (AES), and neutron activation analysis (NAA). SIMS is used to obtain a broad view of both high and low concentration isotopes present and their isotopic ratios, while NAA provides a quantitative measure of the masses of key elements. EDX provides confirmatory data for elements having high concentrations, while AES is used for depth-profiling of high concentration elements. NAA can obtain total quantities of elements in a sample typically containing 10 microspheres, while the other techniques are restricted to probing a local area on single microspheres. Due to variations among microspheres due to location in the packed bed and other effects, this difference in samples becomes very important in present work. The analysis techniques and the nuclear reaction products observed are described further in following sections. ELECTROLYTIC CELL DESCRIPTION AND OPERATION The general configuration of the Pafterson-type electrolytic cell employed is shown in Fig. la. About 1000 microspheres (-O.5 cm3 volume) were used in the packed-bed cell. Titanium electrodes were employed in the present Ni run and in most other runs, except for a few cases where Pt electrodes were used for comparison purposes. .............................................................................. ............... products are produced by +Q reactions via fission of compound nuclei. This model will be presented in detail in a future publication. CONCLUSIONS The results presented here defy conventional views in many ways. First, chemically-assisted nuclear reactions are not widely accepted by the scientific community. The present results not only confront that disbelief, but add a new dimension to the issue by reporting copious light and heavy element reaction products that seem to imply multi-body reactions due to the formation of heavier elements such as Cu and Ag from Ni. Further, a reaction which does not emit intense high-energy gammas is required by the experimental results. All of these features are difficult to comprehend and at first glance seem to point to impurities. However, as stressed, an extensive effort to find an impurity source has not uncovered one. Also, there is other strong evidence (such as isotope shifts, the different products occurring when the coating material is changed, and the similarity in yield trends with results from other workers), which supports the conclusion that the elements observed are reaction products. Fortunately, cell experiments of this type are relatively straightforward and inexpensive. Thus far, reaction products, such as reported here, have been detected by the authors in all dozen experiments of this type performed, using a variety of metallic films. In this sense, the phenomenon seems highly reproducible. The use of thin films as developed here offers a way to simplify the analysis since a large fraction of the film contains the new elements and their localization in the film allows a qualitative determination. Hopefully, open-minded scientists will attempt to replicate the experiments to convince themselves. If verified, the thin-film approach to chemically assisted nuclear reactions opens the way to a whole new field of science. REFERENCES Bockris, J.O'M and G.H. Lin (organizers), 1996. Proceedings of the 1996 Low Energy Nuclear Reactions Conference, J. New Energy, 1, 1, 11 1-1 18. Cravens, Dennis, 1995, "Flowing Electrolyte Calorimetry," Proc. 5th Intem. Conf on Cold Fusion, Valbonne, France, IMRA Europe, 79-86. Crouch-Baker, S., M.C.H. McKubre, F.L. Tanzelia, 1995, "Some Thermodynamic Properties of the H(D)-Pd System," Proc. 5th intern. Conf on Cold Fusion, Valbonne, France, IMRA Europe, 431 @.