Radiation-induced modifications in ZrN: effect of micro vs. nano crystallites
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ZrN is a model system used to understand the irradiation response of isostructural advanced nuclear fuel, UN. UN possesses desirable material properties, such as improved thermal conductivity and fissile uranium density compared to oxides, but understanding damage accumulation and recovery processes in its rocksalt structure remains limited. Micro- and nanocrystalline ZrN were studied under ion irradiation using 600 keV Ar + ions with fluences varying from 1 × 10 15 to 1 × 10 17 ions/cm 2 at room temperature. Structural parameters, crystallite size, and microstrain of crystalline phases were determined via a unique Rietveld refinement of glancing incidence XRD data. Transmission electron microscopy was used to investigate microstructural modifications, and nanoindentation was used to explore the evolution of mechanical properties. The results show a pronounced increase in the crystallite size of nanocrystalline ZrN, while induced damage degrades the coherence of scattering domains in both ZrN systems post-irradiation. Microcrystalline ZrN displays swelling with increasing fluence, whereas nanocrystalline ZrN contracts before showing a continued unit cell expansion at higher fluences. AFM was used to confirm swelling in mi-crocrystalline ZrN, while oxidation in nanocrystalline ZrN is explored using ToF-ERDA and is attributed to a radiation-induced REDOX reaction. Nanoindentation results confirmed increases in the post-irradiated surface hardness and elastic modulus. The TEM investigation provides evidence of periodic and incommensurate ordering in irradiated regions of microcrystalline ZrN. The formation of a distinct epitaxial layer of cubic ZrO 2 on the surface of microcrystalline ZrN has been attributed to the effects of incident ion interactions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".