SHI induced tetragonal tracks in natural zirconia

JH O'Connell and ME Lee and VA Skuratov and RA Rymzhanov, NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS & METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH SECTION B-BEAM INTERACTIONS WITH MATERIALS AND ATOMS, 473, 1-5 (2020).

DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2020.04.002

We describe the observed tetragonal nature of individual ion tracks produced in natural monoclinic zirconia (ZrO2) as a result of 167 MeV Xe irradiation at room temperature in the non-overlapping track regime. Direct observation by transmission electron microscopy of the tetragonal latent tracks reveals a non-continuous structure consisting of segments which are approximately 30 nm in length and angled 9 degrees w.r.t the ion direction. This angle is consistent with the angular difference for the unit cells of the two phases. The tracks are shown to have rectangular cross sections with dimensions of the order 2.5 nm. The tetragonal component orientation relative to the parent monoclinic orientation is in agreement with the proposed variants by Kelly et al. The tetragonal phase transforms back to the monoclinic phase in the range of 200-350 degrees C which is well below the bulk transformation temperature of about 1100 degrees C.

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