Thermal spike response and irradiation-damage evolution of a defective YAlO3 crystal to electronic excitation

Understanding the mechanism of ion-solid interactions and the responses of materials to energetic ion irradiation is fundamentally important to study the irradiation-damage behaviors and evaluate the irradiation-damage tolerances of functional materials working in artificial and natural radiation environments. In this work, an approach utilizing low- and high-energy ion irradiation is utilized to study the coupling effect between nuclear collision and electronic excitation related to an ion-irradiation-induced damage event. Microstructural analysis shows that, compared to the damage-free crystal, electronic excitation induces more considerable irradiation damage in the nuclear-collision-damaged crystal. Utilizing the inelastic thermal spike model, the evolution of the lattice temperature is calculated, revealing that, compared to the damage-free crystal, the local energy diffusion in the nuclear-collision-damaged crystal is suppressed and the irradiation-damage level is increased. This should be attributed to the decrease of the thermal conductivity and increase of the electron-phonon coupling in the nuclear-collision-damaged region.