When certain intermetallic compounds are irradiated with ballistic electrons at low temperatures, the crystal becomes unstable and transforms into an amorphous phase. This electron irradiation induced crystalline to amorphous (C-A) transition is one of a recently discovered class of amorphization processes which occur in the solid state [1]. The relative simplicity of electron-matter interactions, and the ability to follow the transition inside the microscope, make the electron induced C-A transition ideal for the study of these amorphization processes.A bright field image sequence which depicts several features of the C-A transition is shown in the figure. In this example, CuTim was irradiated with 2 MeV electrons at 191 K (9.2 x 1023 e/m2-s; 5.5 x 10-3 dpa/s). The arrows mark a fixed position. In the images, taken after different irradiation times (a:30s, b:60s c:300s), the transition is evident from the distortion of the bend contour around the irradiated area.
MeV Electron Irradiation Induced Solid-State Amorphization (SSA) in B2 Intermetallic Compounds