The radiation damage of 1Cr18Ni9Ti stainless steel and the Zr-Ti-Al alloy by 200 keV Xe＋ ions bombardment at the fluence ranging from 1×1014 to 8×1015 ions/cm2 has been investigated by conventional transmission electron microscope, X-ray diffraction line profile analysis （XRDLPA） and nanoindentation. XRDLPA shows that the order of magnitude of dislocation density in both materials remains almost unchanged up to the highest irradiation dose. Selected-area electron diffraction combined with bright and dark field image indicates that 1Cr18Ni9Ti is more easily damaged than the Zr-Ti-Al alloy. With increasing the ions fluence, the radiation damage became more severe in 1Cr18Ni9Ti, accompanied with phase transition and partial amorphization. The nano-hardness was found to increase rapidly with increasing ion fluence till the dose of 1×1015 ions/cm2, and then gradually saturate with dose. The enhancement of hardness in irradiated materials is due to irradiation-induced defects acting as barriers to dislocation motion.
Nb/Ti multilayers with different modulation periods were prepared by magnetron sputtering deposition. Microstructure and mechanical properties were investigated by XRD, SEM and Nanoindentation. It turns out that hardness of samples increases with decreasing modulation wavelength （A） and then dropped at small A. Through scrutinizing other results in literature, we found that the coherent stress rather than modulus mismatch played more important role for hardness enhancement with de- creasing A of the bcc-hcp multilayers. Annealing of samples in low （or high） vacuum at 400 ~C for 30 min led to large （or medium） enhancement of hardness, while the modulated structure was still maintained. It was found that annealing in low vac- uum resulted in oxygen penetration into the multilayers as revealed by auger electron spectroscopy, but hardly changed metallic sheet resistivity. XRD results suggested that some niobium oxides were formed in Nb layers and oxygen distributed intersti- tially in Ti layers. The large hardness enhancement after annealing is mainly due to the strengthening effect from dispersive distribution of nano-scale niobium oxides and interstitial oxygen in the multilayers. In addition, interfaces between adjacent layers were more distinct after annealing which indicated good thermal stability of laminated structure.
Interactions between vacancies and Σ3 prismatic screw-rotation grain boundary in α-Al2O3 are investigated by the first principles projector-augmented wave method.It turns out that the vacancy formation energy decreases with reducing the distance between vacancy and grain boundary（GB） plane and reaches the minimum on the GB plane（at the atomic layer next to the GB） for an O（Al） vacancy.The O vacancy located on the GB plane can attract other vacancies nearby to form an O–O di-vacancy while the Al vacancy cannot.Moreover,the O–O di-vacancy can further attract other O vacancies to form a zigzag O vacancy chain on the GB plane,which may have an influence on the diffusion behavior of small atoms such as H and He along the GB plane of α-Al2O3.
A comparative study of cascades in nanostructured ferritic alloys and pure Fe is performed to reveal the influence of Y_2Ti_2O_7 nanocluster on cascades by molecular dynamics simulations. The cascades with energies of primary knock-on atom（PKA） ranging from 0.5 keV to 4.0 keV and PKA＇s distances to the interface from 0 to 50 are simulated. It turns out that the Y_2Ti_2O_7 nanocluster can absorb the kinetic energy of cascade atoms, prevent the cascade from extending and reduce the defect production significantly when the cascades overlap with the nanocluster. When the cascade affects seriously the nanocluster, the weak sub-cascade collisions are rebounded by the nanocluster and thus leave more interstitials in the matrix. On the contrary, when the cascade contacts weakly the nanocluster, the interface can pin the arrived interstitials and this leaves more vacancies in the matrix. Moreover, the results indicate that the Y_2Ti_2O_7 nanocluster keeps stable upon the displacement cascade damage.
