Effect of swift heavy ion irradiations in polycrystalline aluminum nitride

J.-C. Nappé (1) , Mourad Benabdesselam (2) , Philippe Grosseau (1) , Bernard Guilhot (3)

1 LPMG-EMSE - Laboratoire des Procédés en Milieux Granulaires
2 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée
3 CIS-ENSMSE - Centre Ingénierie et Santé

Thanks to its high thermal conductivity, aluminum nitride may be a serious candidate as fuel coating for the Gas Fast Reactor. However, its behavior under irradiation is not entirely well understood. In order to catch a glimpse of this behavior, specimens were irradiated with swift heavy ions of different energies then characterised by both thermally stimulated luminescence and optical absorption spectrophotometry. With these techniques, the native defects, as well as those affected by irradiation, were identified: thus, by comparison to the virgin sample, no new defect detectable by these techniques is created by irradiations. Eventually, the fact that these techniques complement each other allowed to understand the effect of irradiation parameters on the defect concentration.

Mots clés: AlN; irradiation; swift heavy ions; electronic interactions; thermoluminescence; optical absorption spectrophotometry

Domaines: Optique / photonique; Physique Nucléaire Expérimentale [nucl-ex]

J.-C. Nappé, Mourad Benabdesselam, Philippe Grosseau, Bernard Guilhot. Effect of swift heavy ion irradiations in polycrystalline aluminum nitride. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, 2010, pp.13. ⟨hal-00530690⟩