Heavy-ion bombardment of a glass surface is a conventional laboratorytechnique for producing damage of interest for radioactive wasteencapsulation. At energy of order 100 keV such a bombardment simulates thedamage produced by α-recoil nuclei and fission fragments resulting from thenuclear decay. The damage region is 100–500 nm depending on conditions ofthe bombardment.

In the present work some results of EPR study of point defects formed insilicate, borate, borosilicate, phosphate and other oxide glasses irradiatedwith different charge particles (C, N, O, Ar. Mn, Cu, Pb) at energy E=150keV and large total fluence of ions (up to 1017 cm-2)are reported. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) is a very sensitivetechnique which gives an information on the structure of point defects andtheir content. It is shown that in some cases (for example, in borateglasses) the oxygen hole centers similar to ones observed in γ-irradiatedglasses are formed after ion bombardment. However, in the majority of casesnew defects which are not typical of γ-irradiated oxide glasses were foundThey were large molecular oxygen ions (O2-O3-O4-) located in the cavities formed under ion bombardment in thenear surface layer of glass. It should be noted that the relative content ofthese defects is of the order of several tens per 1000 incident ions. Thiscontent decreases with increasing fluence and atomic mass of incident ions.It indicates indirectly that point defects are clustered when the damage ofthe near surface layer becomes strong. The formation of gaseous oxygen ispossible in cavities of the damage surface layer.

It was found that some elements (for example C, N and transition metals)form chemical compounds with oxygen. The migration of alkali ions promotesthe formation of such compounds since the chemical compounds were detectedby means EPR in glasses rich in alkali oxides.