Comparative study of irradiation swelling in monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon carbide

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) is considered as one of the most promising structural and coating materials for advanced nuclear applications, due to its low neutron capture cross section and excellent irradiation resistance. The difference in swelling behavior between monocrystalline and polycrystalline SiC is experimentally investigated by heavy ion irradiation at room temperature (RT). In this work, single crystal hexagonal (6H) SiC and polycrystalline chemically vapor-deposited (CVD) SiC are irradiated by 1.5 MeV Si ions with the fluences of 11014-21016 cm-2 and 11015-21016 cm-2, respectively, at RT. The step height of irradiation swelling is measured by a white light interferometer and the lattice expansion of the damage layer is characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectrometry, in addition, the actual irradiation swelling is obtained by dividing the height of swelling step by the depth of damage layer. The XRD profiles show that the lattice expansion in the damage layer increases with the increase of irradiation fluence, and the new diffraction peak relating to the lattice structure of damage layer disappears in a fluence of 21015 cm-2, which means that the damage layer is completely amorphous at this time and the threshold dose of amorphization at RT in single crystal 6H-SiC is less than 0.8 dpa. The direct-impact model is used to fit the swelling step heights of CVD SiC and 6H-SiC irradiated by 1.5 MeV Si, and the swelling results show that the amorphization threshold dose of polycrystalline CVD SiC is larger than that of single crystal 6H-SiC. In the present work, three distinct stages are found in the heavy-ion irradiation swellings between monocrystalline and polycrystalline SiC. i.e., low-fluence region, intermediate-fluence region, and high-fluence region stage. 1) In the low-fluence region, the swellings are similar to each other, since the swelling is mainly contributed to by point defects in this region, and the micron sized grains in polycrystalline CVD SiC are of single crystal structure. 2) In the intermediate-fluence region, the irradiation swelling of the polycrystalline CVD SiC is smaller than that of the single crystal 6H-SiC, since the irradiation-induced amorphousness in polycrystalline CVD SiC is relatively hard to occur due to the existence of grain boundary in this region. 3) The irradiation swellings of 6H-SiC and CVD SiC are almost the same at the high-fluence region stage, since the irradiation swelling is caused by amorphization in this region, and the swelling depends on the difference between densities before and after irradiation. In addition, in the irradiation swelling analysis of SiC materials, XRD swelling measurement method is suitable for irradiation swelling induced by point defects, especially for neutron irradiation experiments.