Abstract Scope |
Oxides play a crucial role in technologies where materials are subject to radiation, yet conventional approaches for characterizing radiation-induced material modifications, such as X-ray diffraction, cannot effectively probe oxygen. To overcome these limitations, we have developed an analytical approach based on neutron total scattering with pair distribution function analysis to characterize various irradiated oxide materials across all material length scales. Key to this approach is the combination of the world’s most intense pulsed neutron source with irradiations at the two large scale heavy ion accelerator facilities. We used ion beams of high specific energies (E > 8 MeV/nucleon), which penetrate deep into the sample (tens of µm) yielding sufficient irradiated material for neutron analysis. This contribution reviews these efforts and shows a few case studies that cover a wide range of radiation-induced effects, including defect accumulation (e.g., CeO2 and ThO2), order-disorder transformations (e.g., Er2Sn2O7), and crystalline-to-amorphous transitions (e.g., Ho2Ti2O7). |