THE LOW PRESSURE OXIDATION OF COPPER SINGLE CRYSTALS

The objective of this research was to determine the mechanism of the low pressure thermal oxidation of copper, from an investigation of 1 the oxide and metal topography, 2 the structural relationships of oxide and metal, 3 the kinetics of the nucleation and growth of the islands of reaction product nuclei. The system, copper plus oxygen, was chosen for study for two main reasons. One was that it had recently been shown that nucleation of oxide occurred on copper over a wide range of easily obtainable conditions. The second reason was that copper had previously been used for oxidation studies in this laboratory and techniques had been developed for the preparation and handling of large single crystal samples.