Zirconium oxidation under high-energy heavy-ion irradiation

This paper concerns the study of zirconium oxidation under irradiation with high energetic Xe ions. The irradiations were performed on the IRRadiation SUD (IRRSUD) beam line at Grand Accelerateur National d’Ions Lourds of Caen. The oxygen partial pressure was fixed at 10−3Pa and two temperature conditions were used, either 480°C reached by Joule effect heating or 280°C due to Xe energy deposition. Zirconia was fully characterized by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy, and grazing angle x-ray diffraction. Apparent diffusion coefficients of oxygen in ZrO2 were determined from these experiments by using a model which takes into account a surface exchange between oxygen gas and the ZrO2 surface. These results are compared with thermal oxidation data.