Eur. Phys. J. B 19, 517-523 (2001)
https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00011090

Influence of the crystallite size on the phase transformation of yttria irradiated with swift heavy ions

¹ CIRIL, CEA-CNRS-ISMRA, rue Claude Bloch, BP 5133, 14070 Caen Cedex 5, France
² LERMAT (Unité CNRS associée n6004) , ISMRA, 6 boulevard du Maréchal Juin, 14050 Caen Cedex, France
³ ESRF, avenue des Martyrs, BP 220, 38043 Grenoble Cedex, France
⁴ LSGMM (URA CNRS 159) , École des Mines, 54042 Nancy Cedex, France

Corresponding author: ^a dufour@labolermat.ismra.fr

Received: 27 January 2000
Revised: 13 December 2000
Published online: 15 February 2001

Abstract

The irradiation effects induced by swift heavy ions are now widely described in `bulk' materials. It is shown here that the behaviour of matter under irradiation depends on its crystalline state in the sense that a given material is all the more sensitive to swift heavy ion irradiations as the mean crystallite size L is small. The present paper relates the experimental results obtained in yttrium oxide from `in situ' X-ray diffraction measurements. Three kinds of sample have been irradiated: sintered samples (m), non-ground powders (L = 45 nm) and ground powders (L = 28 nm). A cubic to monoclinic phase transformation appears if the electronic energy loss of the incident particle is higher than a threshold. The comparison between the different kinds of samples reveals that this phase transformation is all the easier as the mean crystallite size of the target is weak.