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A research activity has started some years ago in the framework of collaboration between the ENEA (Italy) and the SRI (USA), aimed to the identification of traces of nuclear reactions in condensed matter. This work has also involved crosslinked analysis in order to identify effects due to contaminants that could affect the isotopic shift estimate. Nickel thin films have been sputtered on a polymeric substrate and loaded with hydrogen by electrolysis. Reference and active thin films have been prepared contemporaneously during the same sputtering process to have on both the same deposition and the same impurities composition. Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) has been used to analyze the isotopic composition of the electrolyzed and blank substrates. Preliminary results (Violante et al., Proc. 10th Int. Conf. Cold Fusion (ICCF-10), Cambridge, 2003) indicated that a reasonable reproducible apparent shift of the isotopic composition of the Cu element occurred in some of the electrolyzed films, with an increasing of mass 65, while the natural value was always observed for all the blank samples. Cu was particularly suitable for being used as a marker elements because of its only two mass isotopes (63/65) that do not overlap with isotopes of other elements having the same masses. In this work, new experiments have been reproduced to increase the statitistics and further analysis has been performed in order to exclude that the revealed shift was traceable to an artifact.These included SIMS scanning of the sample surface, depth profile analysis by SIMS, mass spectrometric analysis of the electrolyte, SUPER-SIMS [2] analysis of one couple of reference and active films. In particular, the possible contribution from mass interferences on the 65-mass extrasignal has been considered, coming from contaminants or double ionized species. On the basis of the new results, a more complex scenario has been evidenced

Study Of Lattice Potentials On Low Energy Nuclear Processes In Condensed Matter V. VIOLANTE, G. MAZZITELLI, L. CAPOBIANCO Associazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla Fusione, Centro Ricerche Frascati, C.P. 65 00044 Frascati (Rome) Italy F. SARTO, E. SANTORO ENEA, Unita Tecnico Scientifica Fusione, Centro Ricerche Casaccia, Via Anguillarese Km 1.300, 00100 Rome Italy M. MCKUBRE, F. TANZELLA SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave Menlo Park CA (USA) G.H MILEY, N. LUO, P.J. SHRESTHA Nuclear, Plasma and Radiological Engineering Dept. Un. Illinois, 103 S Goodwin Urbana, IL 61801 C. SIBILIA INFM-Dipartimento di Energetica, La Sapienza University, Via Scarpa 16, Rome

Associazione EURATOM-ENEA sulla Fusione, Centro Ricerche Frascati, C.P. 65 - 00044 Frascati (Rome) Italy F. SARTO, A. ROSADA, E. SANTORO ENEA, Unita Tecnico Scientifica Fusione, Centro Ricerche Casaccia, Via Anguillarese Km 1.300, 00100 Rome Italy M. MCKUBRE, F. TANZELLA SRI International 333 Ravenswood Ave Menlo Park CA (USA) C. SIBILIA INFM-Dipartimento di Energetica, La Sapienza University, Via Scarpa 16, Rome Electrochemical experiments have been carried out in order to identify traces of nuclear processes occurring in condensed matter. The experimental activity was primarily designed to reduce the background element impurities by using ultra-pure cleaning procedures to eliminate contamination. The working conditions allowed to obtain a clear signal from the investigated phenomena. Neutron activation, SIMS and high resolution Mass Spectrometer analysis yielded experimental data greater than the measurement error and well above the detection limits of the instruments. The isotopic abundance has been studied for some elements and a strong difference as been observed between experimental data and natural values. A correlation has been observed between the shift of the isotopic composition and a weak emission of X-rays, in some experiments.

A nickel-hydride thin film was studied by the Attenuated Total Reflection (ATR) method. The differences between a “black” film and a pure nickel film “blank” behaviour are showed. The black Ni-hydride film has been obtained by a short electrolysis with 1 M Li2SO4 electrolyte in light water. A shift in the minimum of the observed reflected light occurs, together with a change in the minimum shape, i.e. its half-height width increases. This two phenomenon are due to the change in the electronic band structure of the metal induced by the electron added in the lattice by hydrogen. The changing of the electronic structure, revealed by the laser coupling conditions, leads to consider that an hydride phase was created. Both the blank (not hydrogenated) and black (hydrogenated) specimens were taken under He-Ne laser beam at the reflectance minimum angle for about three hours. A SIMS analysis was also implemented to reveal differences in the isotopic composition of Cu, as marker element, between the blank and black films, in order to study the coupled effect of electrolysis and plasmon-polariton excitation on LENR processes in condensed matter.

Recent progress in understanding the screening effects of core level atomic electrons is summarized in this paper. Some preliminary results on core electron screening were reported before [1]. The studies focus on two types of nuclear reactions in some metal lattices: fusion between deuterons and also proton capture by medium and heavy lattice nuclei. In both reactions the energy of the light nuclear species, proton or deuteron, is on the KeV (1000 electron volts) scale, while that of heavy nuclei is essentially zero. A standard atomic code is used to obtain the core electron charge density and the potential profile in the metal atom. This Hartree-Fock-Slater type code was originally written by Herman and Skillman [2] and later modified by others and available online [3]. For the D-D reaction, the charge density obtained then gives an estimate on the screening length. The corresponding enhancement in Coulomb barrier tunneling can be obtained from this data. For the proton capture reaction, an ion dynamic code [4] written to simulate the motion of KeV protons in Pd/Ni lattice, CLAIRE, was modified to take into account the realistic atomic potential, including core electron contributions. In both cases, our result shows a significant nuclear reaction enhancement. The reaction rate calculated roughly matches the scale of excess heat observed in some metal hydride/deuteride [5] experiments.