Comparative Study of Structural Damage Under Irradiation in SiC Nanostructured and Conventional Ceramics
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0981-JJ07-11
Comparative Study of Structural Damage Under Irradiation in SiC Nanostructured and Conventional Ceramics Yann Leconte1, Isabelle Monnet2, Marc levalois3, Magali Morales3, Xavier Portier3, Lionel Thomé4, Nathalie Herlin-Boime1, and Cecile Reynaud1 1 DSM/DRECAM/SPAM/LFP URA CNRS 2453, CEA/CNRS, bat. 522, CEA Saclay, gif sur yvette, 91191, France 2 DSM/DRECAM/CIRIL, CIRIL-GANIL CNRS UMR 6637, avenue Henri Becquerel, BP 5133, Caen, 14070, France 3 CNRS UMR 6176, SIFCOM - ENSICAEN, 6 boulevard du maréchal Juin, caen, 14000, France 4 CSNSM, IN2P3/CNRS, bat. 104 & 108, Orsay Campus, 91405, France
ABSTRACT In the context of research on new materials for next generation nuclear reactors, it becomes more and more interesting to know what can be the advantages of nanostructured materials for such applications. In this study, we performed irradiation experiments on microstructured and nanostructured β-SiC samples, with 95 MeV Xe and 4 MeV Au ions. The structure of the samples was characterized before and after irradiation by grazing incidence X ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. The results showed the occurrence of a synergy between electronic and nuclear energy loss in both samples with 95 MeV Xe ions, while the nanostructured pellet was found to have a better resistance to the irradiation with 4 MeV Au ions. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, numerous studies are devoted to the study of nanostructured ceramics (NSC) because of their promising properties for nuclear industry. The enhancement of mechanical properties has been already observed for such materials when compared to conventional microstructured ceramics [1,2,3], but their behavior under irradiation still has to be addressed. The high grain boundaries density that can be found in NSC is expected to provide an efficient source of traps for irradiation induced defects [4], but the enhancement of the behavior under irradiation has to be proven. Several studies can be found in the literature dealing with the irradiation of monocrystalline or conventional sintered SiC ceramics. In these studies, no noticeable damage could be observed in SiC from electronic interactions, while a clear evolution of the structure was observed from neutron or low energy ions irradiation [5]. In this latter case, the structure evolution was found to result in an amorphisation with a lattice disorder increasing with the irradiation dose. For monocrystalline α-SiC, total amorphisation was obtained with a dose corresponding to the 0.2 - 0.5 dpa range [6] for low energy ions at room temperature. We present here the structural evolution of a conventional sintered β-SiC ceramic sample compared to the one of a nanostructured sample under different irradiation conditions at room temperature.
EXPERIMENTAL The first challenge was to elaborate NSC samples. First of all, β-SiC nanopowders with controlled granulometry and stoichiometry were synthesized by laser pyrolysis [7,8]. Using these nanopowders, the NSC samples were subsequently prepared by hot isostatic pressing (HIP), and the obtained pe
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