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Assessment of positrons for defect studies in CeO2 materials

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Abstract

Disposal of spent nuclear fuel poses significant challenges, as the UO2 and fission products are under constant irradiation and must be safely stored for millennia. CeO2 is a non-radioactive analog for UO2 for studying microstructure and its evolution. Many techniques have been applied to uranium and cerium oxides to investigate point defects. Positron annihilation spectroscopies (PAS) are sensitive to neutral and negatively charged vacancy-like point defects and impurity vacancy complexes. PAS has been applied previously to UO2+x to investigate nuclear fuels, but virtually no PAS work exists on CeO2. Here, the basics of positron annihilation spectroscopy is reviewed, and preliminary work on undoped and doped CeO2 is shown and compared to the literature results from UO2. To simulate fission product incorporation in spent nuclear fuels, CeO2 samples were doped at different concentration with yttrium. Select samples were irradiated with heavy ions at different doses. Doping and irradiation are shown to give rise to different defect characteristics.

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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgments

MW, JM, and SK thank the Institute for Materials Research and U.S. Department of Energy Nuclear Energy University Program, Used Nuclear Fuel Disposition program, Award # DE-NE0008689. JM thanks the US-UK Fulbright Commission, and JM and SK thank the S.Y. Chung Centenary Fellowship for support during the research period. RM and CC thank Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, under the UK-US Nuclear Energy University Program (Grant No. EP/R006075/1), an Early Career Research Fellowship awarded to CC (Grant No. EP/N017870/1), and the MIDAS Facility, at the University of Sheffield, established with support from the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Materials Research, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Marc H. Weber & John McCloy

  2. Department of Physics, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Marc H. Weber

  3. Materials Science and Engineering Program, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    Sam Karcher & John McCloy

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Ritesh Mohun, Claire Corkhill & John McCloy

  5. School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA

    John McCloy

Authors
  1. Marc H. Weber
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  2. Sam Karcher
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  3. Ritesh Mohun
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  4. Claire Corkhill
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  5. John McCloy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marc H. Weber.

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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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John McCloy was an editor of this journal during the review and decision stage. For the MRS Advances policy on review and publication of manuscripts authored by editors, please refer to mrs.org/editor-manuscripts.

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Weber, M.H., Karcher, S., Mohun, R. et al. Assessment of positrons for defect studies in CeO2 materials. MRS Advances 6, 119–124 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-021-00037-w

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-021-00037-w

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