Structural changes of Ti3SiC2 induced by helium irradiation with different doses

TL;DR

This study investigates how helium irradiation affects the microstructure of Ti3SiC2 MAX phase, revealing damage stages and demonstrating its high irradiation tolerance at elevated temperatures, indicating potential for high-temperature applications.

Contribution

It provides detailed microstructural analysis of Ti3SiC2 under varying helium irradiation doses and temperatures, highlighting its high-temperature irradiation tolerance and potential for structural applications.

Findings

Microstructure damage progresses through three stages with increasing helium dose.

Higher temperature irradiation (450°C) enhances Ti3SiC2's irradiation tolerance.

Ti3SiC2 shows potential as a high-temperature structural and fuel coating material.

Abstract

In this study, the microstructure changes of Ti3SiC2 MAX phase material induced by helium irradiation and evolution with a sequence of different helium irradiation doses of 5E15, 1E16, 5E16 and 1E17cm-2 at room temperature (RT) were characterized with grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) and Raman spectra analysis. The irradiation damage process of Ti3SiC2 can be roughly divided into three stages according to the level of helium irradiation dose: (1) for a low damage dose, only crystal and damaged Ti3SiC2 exit; (2) at a higher irradiation dose, there is some damaged TiC phase additionally; (3) with a much higher irradiation dose, crystal TiC phase could be found inside the samples as well. Moreover, the 450C 5E16cm-2 helium irradiation on Ti3SiC2 has confirmed that Ti3SiC2 has much higher irradiation tolerance at higher temperature, which implies that Ti3SiC2 could be a potential future structural and fuel coating material working at high temperature environments.