Comprehensive study of the effect of the irradiation temperature on the behavior of cubic zirconia

Abstract

High-temperature stability of ion-implanted zirconia and spinel J. Appl. Phys. 97, 113509 (2005) ) and at five temperatures: 80, 300, 573, 773, and 1073 K. Irradiated samples have been characterized by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy in channeling mode, X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy techniques in order to determine the disordering kinetics. All experimental results show that, whatever is the irradiation temperature, the damage build-up follows a multi-step process. In addition, the disorder level at high fluence is very similar for all temperatures. Thus, no enhanced dynamic annealing process is observed. On the other hand, transitions in the damage accumulation process occur earlier in fluence with increasing temperature. It is shown that temperature as low as 573 K is sufficient to accelerate the disordering process in ion-irradiated YSZ. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx

Advanced techniques for characterization of ion beam modified materials

“…1. Damage profiles at this cryogenic temperature appear similar to those obtained at higher temperatures [30]. The fact that the fluence ($10 15 cm À2 ) at which the disorder level significantly increases is the same as that for crystals subjected to room-temperature irradiation indicates that defect mobility is identical at both temperatures.…”

“…Two main advanced techniques, HRXRD and SAXS that both combine state-of-the-art experimentation and simulation approaches, have clearly demonstrated their potential in this field. HRXRD can be employed to measure the strain in strainengineered materials for enhanced physical properties [46,47], and to examine correlation between strain/stress and disorder in materials subjected to ion irradiation [30,48]. SAXS allows characterization of density changes on the nanoscale associated with irradiation-induced microstructural transformations, such as formation of extended defect [50], modification of nanoparticle shape [49,51], and creation of ion tracks [23,52].…”

“…Recent advances in RBS and RBS/C include the study of ion beam induced surface and interface engineering [29], of the role of electronic energy loss on ion beam modification of materials [20,22,30,31] and radiation research on ion irradiation damage evolution from cryogenic temperatures to elevated temperatures [28,30]. For example, yttria-stabilized cubic zirconia (YSZ or cZrO 2 ), as a material widely used for electronic, space, and nuclear applications, was irradiated with 4 MeV Au 2+ ions from liquid nitrogen temperature (80 K) to 1073 K. Several characterization techniques, such as RBS/C and XRD (see Section D), were used to monitor the disordering process including defect production, strain buildup, and dislocation formation, and to identify the microstructural changes.…”

Temperature dependent evolution of dislocation loops in YSZ under high energy electron irradiation

“…As the values of Ed vary with sublattice of cations and anions, experimental measurements of Ed in ceramics are relatively difficult than metals [11,12]. For this reason, reported values of Ed of O and Zr sublattices in cubic zirconia are limited and vary within a certain range, thereby, it had been assumed that values Ed of O and Zr sublattices are in the range of 20-40 and 50-80 eV, respectively [13,14]. Fig.…”

“…Debelle et al [13] showed in 4 MeV Au 2+ irradiated YSZ that there is a significant variation of the threshold fluence for initiating the damage step with irradiation temperature, although the disorder level at high fluence is similar, irrespective of temperature. The transition fluence to step 2, which is the fluence where the accumulated damage in RBS/C experiments revealed a steep increase, decreased with increasing irradiation temperature [13]. This suggests that the lattice disordering proceed relatively at lower fluence at higher temperature irradiation.…”