In-Situ Helium Implantation and TEM Investigation of Radiation Tolerance to Helium Bubble Damage in Equiaxed Nanocrystalline Tungsten and Ultrafine Tungsten-TiC Alloy

Materials

WilliamStreit Cunningham¹  Osman El Atwani²  Stuart Maloy²  Kaan Unal²  Saryu Fensin²  Jonathan Hinks³  Graeme Greaves³ 

[1] Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11790, USA;Materials Science and Technology Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA;School of Computing and Engineering, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK;

关键词: nanocrystalline tungsten;    alloy;    in-situ electron microscopy;    helium bubbles;    radiation tolerance;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma13030794

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The use of ultrafine and nanocrystalline materials is a proposed pathway to mitigate irradiation damage in nuclear fusion components. Here, we examine the radiation tolerance of helium bubble formation in 85 nm (average grain size) nanocrystalline-equiaxed-grained tungsten and an ultrafine tungsten-TiC alloy under extreme low energy helium implantation at 1223 K via in-situ transmission electron microscope (TEM). Helium bubble damage evolution in terms of number density, size, and total volume contribution to grain matrices has been determined as a function of He⁺ implantation fluence. The outputs were compared to previously published results on severe plastically deformed (SPD) tungsten implanted under the same conditions. Large helium bubbles were formed on the grain boundaries and helium bubble damage evolution profiles are shown to differ among the different materials with less overall damage in the nanocrystalline tungsten. Compared to previous works, the results in this work indicate that the nanocrystalline tungsten should possess a fuzz formation threshold more than one order of magnitude higher than coarse-grained tungsten.

【 授权许可】

Unknown