The effects of preferential sputtering phenomenon on SSRT test of AISI 304 stainless steel

Abstract

The absence of experimental neutron reactors, safe hot-cell testing environments, and sufficient time and funding encourage the use of ion-irradiation simulation to study the behavior of fission and fusion materials. It was observed that ion induced preferential sputtering phenomenon occurs in some ion-implanted and -simulated studies. No detailed discussion has been presented, however, concerning the effects of the preferential sputtering phenomenon, such as phase transform (fcc[r arrow]bcc) and its influences, initiating intergranular cracks in slow strain rate tensile (SSRT) testing, TEM specimen preparation difficulties, and so on. Therefore, the objective of this research is to investigate the preferential sputtering phenomenon and its influences on the SSRT of commercial purity AISI 304 austenitic stainless steel. The preferential sputtering (the grain boundary etching and surface slip bands) phenomenon occurred during H[sup +] and Ni[sup +2] ion-irradiation. It was found that the degree of preferential sputtering increased as the fluence increased. It was found that the ion-induced preferential sputtering phenomenon would cause both difficulties in preparing the TEM specimens and the initiating of intergranular cracks. Simultaneously, preferential sputtering would affect the amount of intergranular surface cracking in SSRT tests.