Radiation effects in yttria-stabilized zirconia: Comparison between nuclear and electronic processes

S. Moll (1) , L. Thomé (1) , F. Garrido (1) , L. Vincent (1) , G. Sattonnay (2, 3) , J.-M. Costantini (4) , J. Jagielski (5) , Abdenacer Benyagoub (6) , M. Behar (7)

1 CSNSM - Centre de Spectrométrie Nucléaire et de Spectrométrie de Masse
2 LEMHE - Laboratoire d'étude des matériaux hors équilibre
3 ICMMO - Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d'Orsay
4 SRMA - Service des Recherches Métallurgiques Appliquées
5 IEMT - Institute of Electronic Materials Technology
6 CIMAP - UMR 6252 - Centre de recherche sur les Ions, les MAtériaux et la Photonique
7 UFRGS - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul [Porto Alegre]

Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) single crystals were irradiated with heavy ions at energies ranging from a few MeV to a few GeV in order to compare the effects of nuclear collisions and electronic excitations. The amount of damage created by irradiation was measured as a function of the ion fluence by Rutherford backscattering and channeling spectrometry (RBS/C). Monte-Carlo simulations of RBS/C data show that both the depth distributions of radiation damage and the damage build-up strongly depend on the type of irradiation. At low energy (4 MeV Au ions) the damage exhibits a peak around the ion projected range (~500 nm) and it accumulates with a double-step process; at high energy (940 MeV Pb ions) the damage profiles are rather flat up to several micrometers and the damage accumulation is monotonous (one-step). RBS/C and X-ray diffraction results show that the various irradiations never lead to total disordering of irradiated layers (amorphization), even at the highest fluences used in the experiments.

Mots clés: Zirconia; Ion irradiation; RBS/C

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

S. Moll, L. Thomé, F. Garrido, L. Vincent, G. Sattonnay, et al.. Radiation effects in yttria-stabilized zirconia: Comparison between nuclear and electronic processes. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, 2008, 266, pp.3048-3051. ⟨cea-00373316⟩