In-situ Ion Irradiation and Recrystallization in Highly Structured Materials

Structured materials represent a challenge to decouple their fundamental defect and annihilation mechanisms that largely influence their defect accumulation rates under extreme environments Open scientific questions remain on the relative defect recovery rates in these materials, including effects of local density, connected porosity, and defect content in largely highly oriented twodimensional materials, such as graphite. Pending the atomic arrangements, incident energies, and chemistries, there are further varying outcomes on whether ion-induced defects can be annealed in the vertical, horizontal, or combination axes. Current post analysis TEM studies are not enough to support and report a conclusive understanding of the creation and annihilation of ion-induced defects and subsequent annealing mechanisms in graphite and similar anisotropic materials. Atomic level in situ characterization can begin to these answer questions, as well as augment our ongoing atomistic and first principles-based understanding of radiation damage.