Nanocrystalline (NC) metals are stronger and more radiation-tolerant than their coarse-grained (CG) counterparts, but they often suffer from poor thermal stability as nanograins coarsen significantly when heated to 0.3 to 0.5 of their melting temperature (Tm). Here, we report an NC austenitic stainless steel (NC-SS) containing 1 at% lanthanum with an average grain size of 45 nm and an ultrahigh yield strength of ~2.5 GPa that exhibits exceptional thermal stability up to 1000 °C (0.75 Tm). In-situ irradiation to 40 dpa at 450 °C and ex-situ irradiation to 108 dpa at 600 °C produce neither significant grain growth nor void swelling, in contrast to significant void swelling of CG-SS at similar doses. This thermal stability is due to segregation of elemental lanthanum and (La, O, Si)-rich nanoprecipitates at grain boundaries. Microstructure dependent cluster dynamics show grain boundary sinks effectively reduce steady-state vacancy concentrations to suppress void swelling upon irradiation.

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Y Co0.5Fe0.5O3, in a structure of perovskite, has been successfully prepared with citrate precursors at 950-1100 °C in air by the sol-gel method. The X-ray diffraction patterns show that the samples are orthorhombic within the space group Pnma, where the Co and Fe ions are disordered at the 4b crystallographic sites. The crystal structure refinement undertaken by the Rietveld method has shown that the distortion of Co(Fe)O6 octahedra are large, where the ratio of Co/Fe-O bonding length along a axis to that in the bc plane is about 1.07. Such a large crystal lattice distortion implies a strong lattice-magnetism coupling, which may be utilized in the magnetoelectric devices. Magnetic measurement indicates that the Y Co0.5Fe0.5O3 is antiferromagnetic but showing weak ferromagnetism. We find that Fe3+ ions are in high-spin states, while Co3+ ions are in low-spin states which do not contribute to the magnetism. Both Fe3+ and Co3+ ions are not Jahn-Teller activated although the lattice distortion is large.

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