A rapid and non-destructive method has been required for the determination of hafnium contents in zirconium. The time consuming nature of conventional analytical techniques has provoked the necessity of the investigation of fast neutron activation analysis of hafnium.
In the present paper, a method based on the measurement of short half-life isotope 179mHf produced by the 179Hf(n, n')179mHf has been investigated. The use of Be-D neutrons has made it possible to avoid the interferences from oxygen, zirconium and other elements. Selenium was used as an internal standard material for assuring the precision of the analytical results.
The proposed method seems to be useful as an analytical procedure for hafnium determination in zirconium by fast neutron activation analysis.