Suppression effect of nano-sized oxide particles on helium irradiation hardening in F82H-ODS steel

Helium implantation was performed to investigate irradiation hardening in ferritic/martensitic steels. Depth dependence of nano-hardness was obtained using a Berkovich nano-indenter, and then nano-hardness was extracted from Nix–Gao model. The correlation between irradiation hardening and the concentration 500–2000 appm of helium was plotted. Nano-hardness increases as a function of helium concentration. F82H-ODS with a higher nano-hardness provides a lower irradiation hardening than F82H-IEA. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) revealed that cavities with a uniform distribution were formed after helium implantation at 2000 appm helium concentration, showing a mean size of 1.1 nm with an average number density of 4.9 × 10²³ m⁻³ in F82H-IEA and 1.3 nm with 7.4 × 10²³ m⁻³ in F82H-ODS. Orowan model was applied to evaluate the hardening from dispersed cavities. The significant difference of hardening between calculation and nano-indentation result of F82H-ODS indicates that oxide particles may shield the hardening effect from cavities because of the complex multi-interaction