Ion-irradiation-induced damage in Fe–Cr alloys characterized by nanoindentation

Self-ion irradiation in combination with nanoindentation offers the possibility to characterize irradiation damage in a broad range of irradiation temperature and fluence. Nanoindentation results are reported for Fe–2.5 at.%Cr, Fe–9 at.%Cr and Fe–12.5 at.%Cr irradiated at room temperature, 300 °C and 500 °C. Special features of this work are roughly rectangular damage profiles and exploitation of the full load dependence of hardness. The effects of Cr-content, fluence and irradiation temperature are discussed. Cases of both broad consistence with and deviations from reported trends are found. Hardening features were characterized by means of transmission electron microscopy also taking into account small-angle neutron scattering data reported for neutron-irradiated conditions of the same alloys. A tentative two-feature hardening model was applied.