Investigation of the Microstructure of Fine-Grained YPO4:Gd Ceramics with Xenotime Structure after Xe Irradiation

• Published in: Ceramics Vol. 5; no. 2; pp. 237 - 252
• Main Authors: Mikhaylov, Dmitriy A., Potanina, Ekaterina A., Nokhrin, Aleksey V., Orlova, Albina I., Yunin, Pavel A., Sakharov, Nikita V., Boldin, Maksim S., Belkin, Oleg A., Skuratov, Vladimir A., Issatov, Askar T., Chuvil’deev, Vladimir N., Tabachkova, Nataliya Y.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.06.2022
• Subjects: Amorphization; Ceramics; Density; Fluence; Gadolinium; GIXRD; Grain boundaries; Graphite; Hot pressing; Investigations; Irradiation; metamict phase; Microstructure; Plasma sintering; Radiation; Sintering (powder metallurgy); Sol-gel processes; Spark plasma sintering; Specific gravity; Xenotime; Yttrium phosphate; Japan; Germany; Russia
• ISSN: 2571-6131; 2571-6131
• DOI: 10.3390/ceramics5020019

This paper reports on the preparation of xenotime-structured ceramics using the Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) method. Y0.95Gd0.05PO4 (YPO4:Gd) phosphates were obtained using the sol-gel method. The synthesized powders were nanodispersed and were agglomerated (the agglomerates sizes were 10–50 µm). The ceramics had a fine-grained microstructure and a high relative density (98.67 ± 0.18%). The total time of the SPS process was approximately 18 min. The sintered high-density YPO4:Gd ceramics with a xenotime structure were irradiated with 132Xe+26 ions with 167 MeV of energy and fluences in the range of 1 × 1012–3 × 1013 cm−2. Complete amorphization was not achieved even at the maximum fluence. The calculated value of the critical fluence was (9.2 ± 0.1) × 1014 cm−2. According to the results of grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), the volume fraction of the amorphous structure increased from 20 to 70% with increasing fluence from 1 × 1012 up to 3 × 1013 cm−2. The intensity of the 200 YPO4:Gd XRD peak reached ~80% of the initial intensity after recovery annealing (700 °C, 18 h).