Damage accumulation in ion-irradiated ceramics

The radiation damage induced by energetic ions is one of the basic problems related to ion implantation technology. Each incoming ion creates a huge number of defects, so that high irradiation fluences eventually lead to complete amorphization of the material. Despite the obvious importance of this process, theoretical descriptions of the kinetics of radiation damage accumulation are still incomplete and limited to single-step processes only.In the present paper, we propose a new approach for the description of the radiation damage build-up in crystals, which is based on the concept of subsequent destabilization of the crystalline phases. We compare the presented model to experimental results of damage accumulation kinetics measured for SiC, ZrO2 and MgAl2O4, i.e. cases when one, two or three stages of defects accumulation were observed.