Heat-treated additively manufactured and wrought 316L steels display a comparable response to ion irradiation

Additive manufacturing produces metallic components with inhomogeneous microstructures. This inhomogeneity can negatively impact mechanical properties and in-service performance. Applying post-printing heat treatments can reduce microstructural inhomogeneity but a validation of alloy performance, under specific operational environments is still required. 316L stainless steels are used for a variety of components in nuclear power plants. They are exposed to irradiation at elevated temperature during service, which alters the microstructure and mechanical properties. To validate the implementation of additively manufactured 316L components in environments where they are exposed to irradiation, it is necessary to ensure that additively manufactured components will display comparable behaviour under irradiation to their wrought counterparts. In this study we use atom probe tomography, transmission electron microscopy, and nanoindentation to investigate the response of additively manufactured 316L alloys, produced by laser powder bed fusion, exposed to ion irradiation. Our results, when compared to published data on wrought 316L alloys, demonstrate that performing post-printing heat treatments at 1066 °C and 1150 °C leads to 316L alloys that display a comparable response to ion irradiation when compared to conventionally manufactured 316L specimens.