A comparison of the effect of neutron irradiation on high purity vanadium and vanadium oxygen alloys

Abstract

An investigation of the effect of neutron damage on the low temperature deformation characteristics of high purity vanadium (R _300K/R _4.2K=1100) was undertaken for two purposes. One purpose was to determine if reducing the impurity interstitial content to a lower level would result in a large difference in the effective stress between irradiated and non-irradiated samples. The present data along with previously obtained data does indicate that the difference increases as the impurity interstitial content is reduced. The explanation of this observation is based on the rapid increase of the non-irradiated yield stress at 77 K due to small increases in the oxygen content; however, the increase of the yield stress of the irradiated samples is much less with the same increase in oxygen content. A second purpose of this investigation was to determine the size and density of observable neutron produced defects as a function of oxygen content by transmission electron microscopy, and to relate the changes in density with changes in the yield stress. It was found that the density decreases and the size increases as the oxygen content decreases. There is qualitative agreement between the increase in yield stress at 300 K and the observable defect density. However, the change in the yield stress at 77 K due to neutron irradiation cannot be related to defect density and size.