Prototypic Lightweight Alloy Design for Stellar-Radiation Environments

Matheus A. Tunes, Lukas Stemper, Graeme Greaves, Peter J. Uggowitzer, Stefan Pogatscher

Publikation: Beitrag in FachzeitschriftArtikelForschungBegutachtung

2 Zitate (Scopus)
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Abstract

The existing literature data shows that conventional aluminium alloys may not be suitable for use in stellar-radiation environments as their hardening phases are prone to dissolve upon exposure to energetic irradiation, resulting in alloy softening which may reduce the lifetime of such materials impairing future human-based space missions. The innovative methodology of crossover alloying is herein used to synthesize an aluminium alloy with a radiation resistant hardening phase. This alloy—a crossover of 5xxx and 7xxx series Al-alloys—is subjected to extreme heavy ion irradiations in situ within a TEM up to a dose of 1 dpa and major experimental observations are made: the Mg32(Zn,Al)49 hardening precipitates (denoted as T-phase) for this alloy system surprisingly survive the extreme irradiation conditions, no cavities are found to nucleate and displacement damage is observed to develop in the form of black-spots. This discovery indicates that a high phase fraction of hardening precipitates is a crucial parameter for achieving superior radiation tolerance. Based on such observations, this current work sets new guidelines for the design of metallic alloys for space exploration.
OriginalspracheEnglisch
Aufsatznummer2002397
FachzeitschriftAdvanced science
Jahrgang7
Ausgabenummer22
DOIs
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 18 Nov. 2020

Bibliographische Notiz

Funding Information:
Funding for this research was provided by the European Research Council (ERC) excellent science grant ?TRANSDESIGN? through the Horizon 2020 program under contract 757961 and by the financial support from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) in the project 3DnanoAnalytics (FFG-No 858040). The authors are also grateful to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPRSC) for funding the MIAMI facilities under the grants EP/E017266/1 and EP/M028283/1. The authors are also grateful to Professor Stephen E. Donnelly (UoH) for granting access to the MIAMI facilities where this work was partially carried out. L.S. acknowledges financial support by the Christian Doppler Research Association provided by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Digital and Economic Affairs and the National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. Published by Wiley-VCH GmbH

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