Direct Observation of Single Displacement Cascade in Pyrochlore by Tv-Rate In-Situ TEM and Ex-Situ HRTEM

The ion irradiation-induced crystalline-to-amorphous transformation has been studied in many complex ceramics. Direct impact amorphization has been considered to be one of the fundamental amorphization mechanisms for complex ceramics under heavy ion irradiation . Based on the directimpact model, a highly energetic incident ion transfers its kinetic energy to the target as a thermal spike within 10“13 sec creating a “molten-like” displacement cascade, typically nanometer-scaled in diameter (as indicated by the result of a computer simulation in Fig. 1). This “molten” zone quickly quenches to a small amorphous domain within a few pico-seconds. Epitaxial recrystallization occurs around the amorphous/crystalline interface, so that the size of amorphous domains decrease with time. The accumulation and overlap of small amorphous domains eventually leads to complete amorphization of the irradiated material. Although the in-situTEM technique with the setup shown in Fig. 2 has been extensively applied to the study of the amorphization process in complex ceramics, most of the previous studies relied on in-situobservation of the electron diffraction pattern, and there has been a lack of solid evidence of direct impact amorphization due to the small nature of the cascades and the rapid kinetics of its evolution.