| Abstract: | We report the permeabilities of deuterium and helium-4 through poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) over the temperature range of 25–125°C. For deuterium, permeabilities ranged from 0.5 × 10?18 to 50 × 10?18 mol·m/m2·s·Pa at these two extreme temperatures. Helium permeabilities were roughly five times higher. We also studied the effects of different curing temperatures and time on the deuterium permeability and found that, to within experimental error, results were the same for samples heat treated at any temperature between 100°C and 140°C. Aluminizing the samples using a special process decreased the permeabilities by a factor of at least 5. A sensitive apparatus constructed around a quadrupole spectrometer was used to measure the very low permeabilities. The apparatus is described in detail. |
