It is now available our latest paper on the use of highly concentrated alloy thin films (HCATF) in nuclear industry.
Highly concentrated alloys (HCA) — sometimes also known as high-entropy alloys (HEA) — are a recent class of new metallic alloys under investigation for future applications within the nuclear technology (not only here, of course!). Despite their set of interesting properties for such applications, when costs and availability of some expensive alloying elements are take into consideration, the economic feasibility for commercialisation of HCAs face several challenges.
As an alternative to the “bulk approach”, we have investigated the feasibility of depositing HCATFs via ion beam sputter-deposition (IBSD) on Zircaloy-4 substrates (Zr-1.5Sn %.wt). Following a detailed electron microscopy characterisation of the produced material system, we have carried out heavy ion irradiations within the world-class MIAMI Facilities in UK.
It turns out these HCATF are of superior radiation tolerance when compared with existing conventional ceramic solutions, such as the TiN coatings (article published here), as already explored by our group.
I hope you enjoy reading our new paper at Materials Today Energy! Copies can be found here.
Materials at Extremes 