Radiation enhanced diffusion of Nd in UO2

Single crystal UO2 thin films with Nd as tracer elements in the film mid-plane have been grown on yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrates. The films were irradiated with 1.8 MeV Kr+ ions in the temperature range from 400 °C to 1113 °C, where an evident enhanced diffusion was found in UO2. The temperature dependent measurements have shown an activation energy of 0.56 ± 0.04 eV below 800 °C, and 1.9 ± 0.3 eV above 900 °C. The rate-dependent measurements have shown a linear dependence on the radiation flux, which indicates radiation enhanced diffusion (RED) is in the sink limited kinetics regime. Comparison of the RED results between UO2 and CeO2 has shown significant differences, which indicates that CeO2 used as UO2 surrogate may be questioned in terms of cation diffusion.