Electron irradiation-induced amorphization of precipitates in Zircaloy-2

The crystalline-amorphous transformation of Zr2(Ni,Fe) precipitates in Zircaloy by electron irradiation has been studied in the high voltage electron microscope at temperatures ranging from 92 to 283 K and dose rates between 10-3 and 4 x 10-2 dpa/s. The dose-to-amorphization was found to increase exponentially with temperature and to decrease with increasing dose rate. The occurrence of the transformation was modeled by calculating the increase in free energy because of irradiation effects: accumulation of point defects and lattice disordering. The time-dependent diffusion equation with recombination was solved to find the interstitial and vacancy concentrations as functions of dose, dose rate, and temperature