Oxidation of zirconium—A critical review of literature

Abstract

Perhaps, with the exception of copper and nickel, zirconium has undergone the most extensive oxidation studies within the last decade or so. The vast interest in the oxidation behavior of zirconium stems mainly from two reasons. Firstly, zirconium alloys are of primary importance in nuclear reactor technology. Due to their low cross section for thermal neutrons and because of their relatively good corrosion resistance against water and steam, these alloys may be considered as favourable materials for many structural components, e.g., cladding tubes for water-cooled nuclear reactors. Consequently, investigations into the oxidation behavior of zirconium are necessary if the more intricate corrosion characteristics of zirconium alloys are to be better understood. Secondly, the zirconium-oxygen system is rather simple when compared with many other metal-oxygen systems. Because of this simplicity, zirconium is amenable to fundamental studies of the oxidation mechanism(s) and the obtained results can be of paramount importance in investigating more complex oxidation kinetics, e.g., oxidation of titanium. The present review is primarily concerned with the kinetics and phenomena associated with the oxidation of “pure” zirconium metal by oxygen gas.