Microstructural changes induced by low energy heavy ion irradiation in titanium silicon carbide

Abstract

Low energy ion irradiation was used to investigate the microstructural modifications induced in Ti 3 SiC 2 by nuclear collisions. Characterization of the microstructure of the pristine sample by electron back-scatter diffraction (EBSD) shows a strong texturing of TiSi 2 , which is a common secondary phase present in Ti 3 SiC 2 . A methodology based on atomic force microscopy (AFM) was developed to measure the volume swelling induced by ion irradiation, and it was validated on irradiated silicon carbide. The swelling of Ti 3 SiC 2 was estimated to 2.2 ±0.8 % for an irradiation dose of 4.3 dpa at room temperature. Results obtained by both EBSD and AFM analyzes showed that nuclear collisions induce an anisotropic swelling in Ti 3 SiC 2 .

Contribution of core-loss fine structures to the characterization of ion irradiation damages in the nanolaminated ceramic Ti3AlC2

“…It narrows when further increasing the temperature. These results suggest that the recovery of the MAX phase structure is almost total at 800 • C, in good agreement with recent work on Ti 3 Si 1−x Al x C 2 [7] and Ti 3 SiC 2 [10]. The lattice parameter after recovery (c r =18.50Å) is closer to the theoretical value for a powder (c t =18.501Å) [68] than the value at the initial state (c i =18.56Å).…”

“…There are only few studies about the behavior of MAX phases under ion irradiation, almost exclusively focused on Ti 3 AC 2 (A = Si, Si 1−x Al x , Al) [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15], in addition to (Ti 0.95 Zr 0.05 ) 3 SiC 2 [16] and (Ti,Al)N/Ti 2 AlN x multilayers [17]. They highlight a strong tolerance to damage induced by ion irradiation and a retained crystalline structure, to the exception of Cr 2 AlC and Cr 2 GeC, which amorphize at moderate fluence (10 13 -10 14 Xe.cm −2 ) [18].…”

Formation of nanosized hills on Ti3SiC2 oxide layer irradiated with swift heavy ions

“…No hill is evidenced by AFM for these two irradiation conditions. Note that the grain boundary revealing (Figure 8a) is due to an anisotropic swelling induced by the nuclear collisions [30]. ( Figure 9) confirm the absence of hills noticed by AFM (Figure 8).…”

Structural changes induced by heavy ion irradiation in titanium silicon carbide

“…The measure of the microstrain yield was conducted by evaluating the broadening of the (1 0 4) peak of Ti 3 SiC 2 (the most intense isolated peak), and by considering that the crystallite size is large enough not to induce broadening; this consideration is motivated by observations made by Electron Back-Scatter Diffraction (EBSD), which allowed us to highlight a crystallite size greater than 1 lm [29].…”

“…In particular, the plasticity of Ti 3 SiC 2 at room temperature may be explained by its nanolamellar structure, which confers to Ti 3 SiC 2 material a propensity to delaminate under the effect of mechanical stress [22][23][24]. However, if the behavior of this material has already been studied under various conditions more or less extreme [20,21,[25][26][27][28], except few articles related to Ti 3 SiC 2 that were recently published [29][30][31][32], and others related to Ti 3 (Si,Al)C 2 [33][34][35][36], no study has been conducted on the irradiation behavior of Ti 3 SiC 2 .…”