An ESR and ENDOR study of irradiated 6Li-formate

Lithium formate (6LiOOCH·H2O), 95% 6Li enrichment, combined with an exchange of crystallization water with D2O was investigated. The ESR spectrum of the radiation induced free radicals stable at room temperature consists of a singlet with a narrow line width, 0.92 mT. 6Li has smaller magnetic moment and nuclear spin, which resulted in the narrower line width accompanied with an increase in peak amplitude. In comparison with lithium formate with natural isotopic composition, 6Li (7.5%, I = 1) and 7Li (92.5%, I = 3/2), the sensitivity was increased by a factor of two. With optimised spectrometer settings 6Li formate had seven times higher sensitivity compared to alanine. Therefore this material is proposed as a dosimeter material in a dose range down to 0.1 Gy. The g and the 13C-hyperfine (hf) tensors of the CO2− radical anion, major paramagnetic products, were evaluated to be g = (2.0037, 1.9975, 2.0017), and A(13C) = (465.5, 447.5, 581.3) MHz for polycrystalline samples at room temperature. Furthermore, the 1H-hf and 6Li-hf tensors observed for the surroundings of CO2− by ENDOR technique were in fairly good agreement with DFT calculations. The CO2− radicals are found to be so stable that the formate is applicable to the ESR dosimetry, because of fully relaxing in a fully relaxed geometrical structure of the CO2− component and remaining tight binding with the surroundings after the H atom detachment from HCO2−.