@article{10d96edd3ca54323820e393dc5be4330,
title = "Proton irradiation-decelerated intergranular corrosion of Ni-Cr alloys in molten salt",
abstract = "The effects of ionizing radiation on materials often reduce to “bad news”. Radiation damage usually leads to detrimental effects such as embrittlement, accelerated creep, phase instability, and radiation-altered corrosion. Here we report that proton irradiation decelerates intergranular corrosion of Ni-Cr alloys in molten fluoride salt at 650 °C. We demonstrate this by showing that the depth of intergranular voids resulting from Cr leaching into the salt is reduced by proton irradiation alone. Interstitial defects generated from irradiation enhance diffusion, more rapidly replenishing corrosion-injected vacancies with alloy constituents, thus playing the crucial role in decelerating corrosion. Our results show that irradiation can have a positive impact on materials performance, challenging our view that radiation damage usually results in negative effects.",
author = "Weiyue Zhou and Yang Yang and Guiqiu Zheng and Woller, {Kevin B.} and Stahle, {Peter W.} and Minor, {Andrew M.} and Short, {Michael P.}",
note = "Funding Information: The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Transatomic Power Corporation under Grant No. 023875-001, and the US Department of Energy Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) under Grant No. 327075-875J. A.M. acknowledges the support of FUTURE (Fundamental Understanding of Transport Under Reactor Extremes), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences. Y.Y. was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05-CH11231 within the Mechanical Behavior of Materials (KC 13) program at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The authors acknowledge support by the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05-CH11231. The authors wish to thank Charles Forsberg (MIT), Peter Hosemann and Raluca Scarlat (UC Berkeley), Gabriel Meric de Bellefon (Kairos Power), En-Hou Han (IMR, China), and Il-Soon Hwang (UNIST, Korea) for discussions in guiding this study. Thanks are due to Mitchell Galanek, Ryan Toolin, Ed Lamere, and Ryan Samz from MIT{\textquoteright}s Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) department for verifying device safety and shielding, and to Amy Tatem-Bannister and William DiNatale for training and access to the argon ion cross-section polisher. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020, The Author(s).",
year = "2020",
month = dec,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1038/s41467-020-17244-y",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "11",
journal = "Nature Communications",
issn = "2041-1723",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "1",
}