Scavenging studies of OH reactions within radiation tracks

The lifetime distribution function which describes the reaction of radiation chemical intermediates within tracks can be obtained by inversion of the LaPlace transform which describes the concentration dependence for scavenging of the intermediate. Studies of the dependence of the yield for the gamma ray induced oxidation of ferrocyanide to ferricyanide show that median lifetime of track processes involving OH radicals in electron tracks is approx. 1 ns. The yield of OH radicals which escape the track in water is 2.65+-0.1 in track processes. From the concentration dependence for OH oxidation the time dependence for OH decay is about a factor of 2 greater than the corresponding value for esub(aq)- showing that OH can be scavenged somewhat more easily than the reducing species. (author)