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Crystallographic evolution of MAX phases in proton irradiating environments
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Crystallographic evolution of MAX phases in proton irradiating environments

Joseph Ward, Simon Middleburgh, Matthew Topping, Alistair Garner, David Stewart, Michel W. Barsoum, Michael Preuss and Philipp Frankel
Journal of nuclear materials, v 502
15 Apr 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnucmat.2018.02.008
url
https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/crystallographic-evolution-of-max-phases-in-proton-irradiating-environments(5e106a04-524f-411d-9163-54d792a0a100).htmlView
Accepted (AM)Open Access (License Unspecified),  Open

Abstract

Accident tolerant fuel coatings DFT modelling MAX phases Nuclear X-ray diffraction and proton irradiation
This work represents the first use of proton irradiation to simulate in-core radiation damage in Ti3SiC2 and Ti3AlC2 MAX phases. Irradiation experiments were performed to 0.1 dpa at 350 °C, with a damage rate of 4.57 × 10−6 dpa s−1. The MAX phases displayed significant dimensional instabilities at the crystal level during irradiation leading to large anisotropic changes in lattice parameter, even at low damage levels. The instabilities were accompanied by a decomposition of the Ti-based MAX phases to their binary constituents, TiC. Experimentally observed changes in lattice parameter have been correlated with density functional theory modelling. The most energetically favourable and/or most difficult to recombine defects considered were an M-A antisite ({MA:AM}), and carbon Frenkel ({VC:Ci}). It is proposed that antisite defects, {MA:AM}, are the main contributor to the observed changes in lattice parameter. The proposed mechanism reported in this work potentially enables to design MAX phase compositions, which do not favour antisite defect accumulation. In addition, comparison between the experimental results and theoretical calculations shows that a greater amount of residual damage remains in Ti3AlC2 when compared to Ti3SiC2 after the same irradiation treatment.

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Collaboration types
Industry collaboration
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Nuclear Science & Technology
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