Logo image
Back
Direct Observation of Sink-Dependent Defect Evolution in Nanocrystalline Iron under Irradiation
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Direct Observation of Sink-Dependent Defect Evolution in Nanocrystalline Iron under Irradiation

Osman El Atwani, James Nathaniel, Asher C Leff, Khalid Hattar, MItra L Taheri and Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Scientific reports, v 7(1), pp 1836-12
12 May 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01744-x
PMID: 28500318
url
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01744-x.pdfView
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open
url
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-01744-xView
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

ENGINEERING NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY
Crystal defects generated during irradiation can result in severe changes in morphology and an overall degradation of mechanical properties in a given material. Nanomaterials have been proposed as radiation damage tolerant materials, due to the hypothesis that defect density decreases with grain size refinement due to the increase in grain boundary surface area. The lower defect density should arise from grain boundary-point defect absorption and enhancement of interstitial-vacancy annihilation. In this study, low energy helium ion irradiation on free-standing iron thin films were performed at 573 K. Interstitial loops of a 0 /2 [111] Burgers vector were directly observed as a result of the displacement damage. Loop density trends with grain size demonstrated an increase in the nanocrystalline (<100 nm) regime, but scattered behavior in the transition from the nanocrystalline to the ultra-fine regime (100–500 nm). To examine the validity of such trends, loop density and area for different grains at various irradiation doses were compared and revealed efficient defect absorption in the nanocrystalline grain size regime, but loop coalescence in the ultra-fine grain size regime. Lastly, a relationship between the denuded zone formation, a measure of grain boundary absorption efficiency, grain size, grain boundary type and misorientation angle is determined.

Metrics

7 Record Views
73 citations in Web of Science

Details

InCites Highlights

Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Logo image