MeV electron-irradiation-induced structural change in the bcc phase of Zr–Hf–Nb alloy with an approximately equiatomic ratio

Phase stability and microstructures of high entropy alloys ion irradiated to high doses

“…The significantly reduced thermal conductivity in HEAs and increased phonon contribution may play an important role in their outstanding resistance against irradiation (e.g., the extraordinary phase stability and exceptionally small volume swelling), as observed in this study and others [17,20,21,40,47]. Ullah et al [38] has reported that the disordered electrons in disordered solid solution alloys can significantly reduce the local heat conduction, and consequently, they keep the damaging energy longer at the deposition locations, and thus favor defect recombination.…”

“…This manuscript version is made available under the Elsevier user license http://www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ 2 / 37 efficient and economical and produce less radioactive waste [4], the high-performance structural materials will be required to withstand severer environment, such as higher temperatures and irradiation doses, which exceeds the limits of current nuclear materials. Therefore, the advanced nuclear reactor designs call for dramatic progress in materials, and numerous new materials, such as oxide dispersion steel (ODS) [5], bulk metallic glass (BMG) [6], ceramic materials [7], and bulk nano-layered (NL) composites [8], have been investigated in order to be used in the advanced nuclear reactors [9].Recently, high entropy alloys (HEAs) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16], which are based on the concept of concentrated multi-component solid solution, have shown attractive properties in mitigating irradiation damages, e.g., in CoCrCuFeNi HEA [17], Al x CoCrFeNi HEAs [18,19], and refractory HfNbZr medium-entropy alloy [20,21]. The FCC structure of the as-sputtered CoCrCuFeNi remained stable against irradiation over a wide temperature range from 298 K to 773 K without inducing grain coarsening [17].…”

“…Recently, high entropy alloys (HEAs) [10][11][12][13][14][15][16], which are based on the concept of concentrated multi-component solid solution, have shown attractive properties in mitigating irradiation damages, e.g., in CoCrCuFeNi HEA [17], Al x CoCrFeNi HEAs [18,19], and refractory HfNbZr medium-entropy alloy [20,21]. The FCC structure of the as-sputtered CoCrCuFeNi remained stable against irradiation over a wide temperature range from 298 K to 773 K without inducing grain coarsening [17].…”

Single-Phase Concentrated Solid-Solution Alloys: Bridging Intrinsic Transport Properties and Irradiation Resistance

“…The most studied high and medium entropy alloy systems regarding irradiation effects in the past few years have been the FCC transition metal alloys, primarily the NiCoFeCr-M (M = Mn, Al, Cu, and Pd) and the binary and ternary subsystems of NiCoFeCr. The BCC structured alloys have been much less studied, although the studies on the thin film ZrHf-Nb near-equiatomic ternary alloys (while not single-phase) under MeV electron irradiation have been among the earliest experimental investigations of the phase stability that argue the high irradiation resistance of HEAs (Nagase et al, 2012(Nagase et al, , 2013.…”

Irradiation Resistance in Al x CoCrFeNi High Entropy Alloys

“…8 Furthermore, HEAs may be particularly useful for high-dose irradiation applications because they are claimed to possess self-healing capabilities, [9][10][11] which are assumed due to the severe lattice distortions or atomic-level stress 9 caused by the mismatch in atom size between the principal elements. 12 It has been reported that, for the Al x CoCrFeNi HEAs, the crystal structure of the stable phases in the microstructure evolves from a single face-centered cubic (FCC), to FCC + body-centered cubic (BCC), and BCC structures with increasing the Al contents.…”