The variation of defect damage with depth in molybdenum irradiated with 2MeV nitrogen ions

Transmission electron microscopy has been used to examine the damage produced in specimens of high purity molybdenum following irradiation with 2 MeV nitrogen ions in the Van de Graaff accelerator. A simple electropolishing technique was developed to allow the defect damage to be examined at different depths on a single specimen. Some results are presented here for specimens irradiated in the range 600–800°C, together with theoretical predictions of the nitrogen range and the variation of displacement damage with range, The experimental results show that the defect damage to the lattice results in a structure of dislocation loops, interstitial in nature, whose size drops with distance from the bombarded surface and whose concentration increases. Nevertheless the retained defect damage, measured by integrated loop area, agrees reasonably with the theoretical variation of displacement damage with range while the increase in loop concentration with depth coincides with the variation in ratio of nitrogen concentration to displacement damage. This latter result agrees with the hypothesis that the nucleation of damage is controlled to a large extent by the ratio of impurity atoms to displaced atoms.