Is ''metamictization'' of zircon a phase transition?

Metamictization is the transition from the crystalline to an aperiodic or amorphous state due to alpha-decay event damage from constituent radionuclides (238U, 235U, and 232Th) and their daughters. However, this transformation in minerals is part of a larger class of radiation-induced transformations to the amorphous state that has received considerable recent attention as a result of ion- and electron-beam experiments on metals, intermetallics, simple oxides, and complex ceramics and minerals. Diffuse X-ray scattering from single crystals of metamict zircon reveals residual crystallinity even at high fluences (up to 7.2 x 1018 α-decay events/g). The experimental evidence does not suggest that radiation-induced amorphization is a phase transition. The observations are in good agreement with a nonconvergent, heterogeneous model of amorphization in which damage production is a random process of cascade formation and overlap at increasing fluence. Instead of an amorphization transition, the existence of a percolation transition is postulated. At the level of radiation damage near the percolation point, the heterogeneous strain broadening of X-ray diffraction profiles is reduced whereas the particle-size broadening increases. Simultaneously, the macroscopic swelling of the zircon becomes larger than the maximum expansion of the unit-cell parameters. A suitable empirical parameter that characterizes this transition is the flux, Ds, at which the macroscopic expansion is identical to the maximum expansion of the crystallographic unit cell. In zircon, Ds = 3.5·1018 α-decay events/g