Characterization of irradiated microstructure by X-ray diffraction line profile analysis

TL;DR

This study investigates how proton and oxygen ion irradiation affect the microstructure of zirconium alloys using X-ray diffraction line profile analysis, revealing dose-dependent microstructural changes.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of microstructural evolution in zirconium alloys under different ion irradiation conditions using XRDLPA.

Findings

Proton irradiation causes minimal microstructural change with dose.

Oxygen irradiation significantly reduces domain size at high doses.

Microstrain and dislocation density increase with oxygen ion dose.

Abstract

Zirconium based alloys have been irradiated with 11 and 15 MeV proton and 116 MeV oxygen ions at different doses. The changes in the microstructure have been studied for the ion irradiated alloys as a function of dose using X-Ray Diffraction Line Profile Analysis (XRDLPA) based on the whole powder pattern fitting technique. It was observed that the microstructural parameters like domain size, microstrain within the domain, dislocation density did not change significantly with the increase in dose for proton irradiated samples. A clear change was noticed in these microstructural parameters as a function of dose for oxygen irradiated samples. There was a drastic decrease in domain size at a dose of 1x10^17 O5+/m2 but these values reached a plateau with increasing dose. The values of microstrain and dislocation density increased significantly with the dose of irradiation.