Nanostructuring for Radiation Tolerance

The growing global demand for clean reliable energy has resulted in renewed interest in both fission and fusion energy system development. Unfortunately, many of these designs are currently limited by the potential materials available that can withstand the temperatures, particle flux, displacement damage, and other extreme environments at the core or plasma facing surface of generation IV nuclear reactors and fusion energy systems, respectively. Within the last two decades, nanostructuring has emerged as a set of processing techniques to tailor the distance between where the charged particle is inserted, or the displacement damage occurs, and the nearest sinks that can adequately absorb the radiation damage. If done properly, the incorporation of nanostructures can provide the ability to control the radiation tolerance of various microstructures. This is best exemplified in the inclusion of nanoscale oxide particles in steels to create oxide dispersion-strengthened (ODS) alloys. However, more generally the understanding of radiation stability through nanostructuring is not fully understood and seems currently to be highly material and radiation environment dependent. New characterization methods to investigate structure, properties, and performance of materials, such as machine learning assisted characterization, in-situ measurements, and miniature-scale studies are rapidly advancing our understanding of the active mechanisms in these nanostructured systems. These areas are crucial for tackling the specific challenges posed by irradiation field, extreme temperatures, and aggressive chemical environments. The data generated by these new characterization tools are more than just descriptive metrics, they serve as a transformative bridge for refining and validating both physics-based models, thereby enhancing their prediction accuracy. Similarly, this collection encourages theoretical, and modeling manuscripts associated with the impact of nanostructuring on the evolution of radiation damage at various temperatures, mechanical stress, magnetic field, vacuum pressure, and chemical exposure. This collection on nanostructuring for radiation tolerance solicits papers investigating through experiments or modeling the impact of nanograin, nanolayes, highly twinned, nanoporous, nanoparticles, or nanowire-based structures on the radiation tolerance of any material system.

Keywords: Nanostructured materials, Radiation Tolerance, In-situ Measurrements, Advanced Nuclear reactors, Fusion Energy Systems, Helium Bubbles, Ion Beam Irradiation, Neutron Irradiation, Molecular Dynamic, Multiscale Modeling.

This Collection supports and amplifies research related to SDG 7 and SDG 9