The influence of the energy of incident protons on the defect formation and radiation resistance of AlN ceramics

Abstract The main goal of this work is to study the effect of irradiation with protons with an energy of 0.5–1.5 MeV at a fluence of 1х1017 proton/cm2 on the mechanical and structural properties of AlN ceramics. The choice of AlN ceramics as objects of study is due to their high resistance to radiation damage, their great potential for using them as structural materials, dosimetric materials, etc. During the tests, it was found that at low incident particle energies the degree of deformation of the crystal structure is greatest, due to the fact that all radiation defects are closed in a small volume of the surface layer. An increase in proton energy leads to an increase in the path length of protons in ceramics, while a decrease in damage to the surface layer is observed, however, the damage depth becomes larger with an increase in proton energy. The obtained results confirm a high degree of resistance to hydrogenation processes when irradiated with protons with energies of 1.0–1.5 MeV, however, at energies of incident protons of 0.5 MeV, a decrease in strength properties is observed due to the presence of a large number of dislocation and point defects in the near-surface layer of small volume, which leads to partial disordering and degradation of structural and optical properties.