Superior radiation tolerant materials: Amorphous silicon oxycarbide Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. We studied the radiation tolerance of amorphous silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) alloys by combining ion irradiation, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The amorphous SiOC alloys thin films were grown via co-sputtering from SiO 2 and SiC (amorphous phase) targets either on a surface oxidized Si (100) substrate or on a sodium chloride substrate. By controlling the sputtering rate of each target, SiOC alloys with different compositions (1:2, 1:1, 2:1 ratios) were obtained. These alloys were irradiated by 100 keV He + ions at both room temperature and 600 C with damage levels ranging from 1 to 20 displacements per atom (dpa). TEM characterization shows no sign of crystallization, void formation or segregation in all irradiated samples. Our findings suggest that SiOC alloys are a class of promising radiation-tolerant materials.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS

altmetric score

  • 6

author list (cited authors)

  • Nastasi, M., Su, Q., Price, L., Santana, J., Chen, T., Balerio, R., & Shao, L.

citation count

  • 64

complete list of authors

  • Nastasi, Michael||Su, Qing||Price, Lloyd||Santana, Juan A Colon||Chen, Tianyi||Balerio, Robert||Shao, Lin

publication date

  • June 2015