In-situ irradiation tolerance investigation of high strength ultrafine tungsten-titanium carbide alloy

El-Atwani, O.; Cunningham, W. S.; Esquivel, E.; Li, M.; Trelewicz, J. R.; Uberuaga, B. P.; Maloy, S. A.

doi:10.1016/j.actamat.2018.10.038

Title: In-situ irradiation tolerance investigation of high strength ultrafine tungsten-titanium carbide alloy

Journal Article · Mon Oct 29 00:00:00 EDT 2018 · Acta Materialia

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2018.10.038· OSTI ID:1483542

El-Atwani, O. ^[1];

^[2]; Esquivel, E. ^[1]; Li, M. ^[3];

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Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Dept. of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Division of Nuclear Engineering
Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States). Dept. of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering. Inst. for Advanced Computational Science

Refining grain size and adding alloying elements are two complementary approaches for enhancing the radiation tolerance of existing nuclear materials. Here, we present detailed in-situ irradiation research on defect evolution behavior and irradiation tolerance of ultrafine W-TiC alloys (thin foils) irradiated with I MeV Kr+2 at RT and 1073 K, and compare their overall performance to pure coarse grained tungsten. Loop Burgers vector was studied confirming the presence of <100> loops whose population increased at high temperature. Loop density, average loop area, and overall damage are reported as a function of irradiation dose revealing distinct defect evolution behavior from pure materials. The overall damage generally followed the average loop size trend, which decreased with time for both temperatures, but was higher at 1073 K and attributed to biased vacancy sink behavior of the TiC dispersoids evidenced by large vacancy clusters on their interfaces. By comparison, the overall loop and void damage in pure tungsten was larger by a factor of six and two, respectively. The improved irradiation damage resistance in the alloys is thus attributed to the effect of dispersoids in 1) the enhancement in annihilating defects and mutual defect recombination due to both dispersoids and a higher grain boundary density; 2) decreasing the loop mobility, causing shrinkage and annihilation of loop density, which was confirmed via in-situ video. Several mechanisms are illustrated to describe the performance of the complex alloy system. The results motivate further experimental and modeling research that aims to understand the many different phenomena occurring at different time scales.

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Research Organization:: Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); USDOE Office of Nuclear Energy (NE)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-06CH11357; AC07-05ID14517; SC0017899; AC07- 051D14517; 20160674PRD3

OSTI ID:: 1483542

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1503318; OSTI ID: 1636975

Report Number(s):: LA-UR-18-27540

Journal Information:: Acta Materialia, Vol. 164; ISSN 1359-6454

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 27 works

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