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Effect of grain size on the irradiation response of grade 91 steel subjected to Fe ion irradiation at 300 °C

  • Metals & corrosion
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Abstract

Irradiation using Fe ion at 300 °C up to 100 dpa was carried out on three variants of Grade 91 (G91) steel samples with different grain size ranges: fine-grained (FG, with blocky grains of a few micrometers long and a few hundred nanometers wide), ultrafine-grained (UFG, grain size of ~ 400 nm) and nanocrystalline (NC, lath grains of ~ 200 nm long and ~ 80 nm wide). Electron microscopy investigations indicate that NC G91 exhibit higher resistance to irradiation-induced defect formation than FG and UFG G91. In addition, nano-indentation studies reveal that irradiation-induced hardening is significantly lower in NC G91 than that in FG and UFG G91. Effective mitigation of irradiation damage was achieved in NC G91 steel in the current irradiation condition.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy through the NEET-NSUF (Nuclear Energy Enabling Technology—Nuclear Science User Facility) program (award number DE-NE0008524), and through the NSUF-RTE program (award number 18-1403). Partial support for Haiming Wen and Andrew Hoffman came from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Faculty Development Program (award number NRC 31310018M0044). Ruslan Valiev gratefully acknowledges the financial support from Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Project 20-03-00614).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, 65409, USA

    Jiaqi Duan, Haiming Wen & Maalavan Arivu

  2. Warwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK

    Jiaqi Duan

  3. Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO, 65409, USA

    Haiming Wen & Andrew Hoffman

  4. Departments of Engineering Physics and Materials Science & Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Li He & Kumar Sridharan

  5. Electron Microscopy Core Facilities, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Xiaoqing He

  6. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Xiaoqing He

  7. Institute of Physics of Advanced Materials, Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa, 450008, Russia

    Rinat Islamgaliev & Ruslan Valiev

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  1. Jiaqi Duan
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Correspondence to Haiming Wen.

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Duan, J., Wen, H., He, L. et al. Effect of grain size on the irradiation response of grade 91 steel subjected to Fe ion irradiation at 300 °C. J Mater Sci 57, 13767–13778 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-022-07480-6

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