Observation of Stabilized Tetragonal Latent Tracks Induced by Single SHI Impacts in Monoclinic Natural Zirconia at Room Temperature

J.H. O'Connella, M.E. Leea, V.A. Skuratovb aCentre for HRTEM, Nelson Mandela University, P.O. Box 77000, Port Elizabeth 6031, South Africa bFlerov Laboratory for Nuclear Research, Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Joliot-Curie 6, 141980 Dubna, Moscow region, Russia

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In this paper we describe the observed tetragonal nature of individual ion tracks produced in natural monoclinic zirconia as a result of 167 MeV Xe irradiation at room temperature in the non-overlapping track regime. The direct observation by transmission electron microscopy of the tetragonal latent tracks reveals a morphology which were observed to be non-continuous in length and consisting of sections which are approximately 25 nm in length and an angular separation of 9° which is consistent with the angular difference for the unit cells of the two phases. The tracks are shown to have rectangular cross-sections which are of the order 2.5 nm. Transmission electron microscopy in situ heating of the tracks reveals that the tetragonal phase transforms back to the monoclinic phase in the range of 350-500° which is well below the bulk transformation temperature of about 1000°.

DOI:10.12693/APhysPolA.136.237 PACS numbers: 61.80.-x