Hafnium implanted in iron .2.Isolated Hafnium Nitrogen Complexes

We have used the perturbed angular correlation technique to study the interaction of interstitially diffusing nitrogen atoms with substitutional hafnium atoms implanted in iron. It was found that after post-implantation of 250 eV nitrogen ions at 450 K, isolated HfVN(x) complexes with x = 1, 2 are formed in the iron matrix. We propose a possible geometrical configuration for the HfVN2 complex. Isochronal annealing experiments showed nitrogen dissociation from the HfVN(x) complexes at 773 K. The dissociation energy was determined to be 2.7(2) eV.