Paper on Multimodal Analysis of Irradiated Cladding Published in J. Mater. Res. Tech.
Our team’s latest paper, led by Xiao-Ying Yu, has just been published in the Journal of Materials Research and Technology! We explore the migration of lithium and tritium in cladding material exposed to neutron irradiation, illustrating a powerful multimodal approach to tracking mass transport at the nanoscsale.
From the abstract:
Understanding compositional and microstructural changes in functional intermetallic coatings is of great importance for fusion energy and nuclear materials applications. Tritium (3H) and lithium ( Li, Li) transport within a neutron irradiated target rod employing an aluminide-coated austenitic stainless-steel cladding was investigated using state-of-the-art multimodal imaging. Specifically, a scanning electron microscope augmented with focused ion beam (SEM-FIB) was used to prepare lift-out samples of the irradiated coating for microanalysis. Scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) was used to acquire atomic-scale information on the coating surface microstructure, morphology, and composition. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to determine lift-out dimensions nondestructively. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS) revealed the presence of carbonaceous species and unexpected lithium isotopic distributions in the irradiated tubing, suggesting light isotope mobility between internal target components during irradiation. SIMS chemical mapping of aluminide coatings at core midplane and lower core locations of the cladding shows that light isotopic (e.g., H, Li, Li) distributions are different in the irradiated coating. Advance correlative imaging results suggest unexpected lithium transport during the tritium production process and give new insights into the fundamental transport mechanism within the target during irradiation and non-equilibrium conditions.
To view the manuscript, visit: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmrt.2021.06.066
To download the manuscript directly, click here.