Determination of strain and damage profiles in irradiated materials: Application to cubic zirconia irradiated at high temperature

A methodology is presented that allows to retrieve strain and damage profiles in irradiated single crystals. The approach makes use of high-resolution X-ray diffraction θ–2θ scans coupled with numerical simulations of the diffraction profiles. The potential of the method is illustrated with cubic yttria-stabilized zirconia single crystals, irradiated with 4 MeV Au2+ ions at different temperatures (25, 500 and 800 °C). The simulations reveal that upon increasing ion fluence, the width of the damaged region increases and both the strain and damage levels inside this region increase. The damage build-up occurs according to a two-step mechanism: in the first step, the damage increases slowly up to a critical fluence, above which the second step takes place and is characterized by dramatic increase of the damage. The transition fluence is shifted towards lower values at higher temperatures.