Effect of surface orientation on blistering of copper under high fluence keV hydrogen ion irradiation

Copper and hydrogen are among the most common elements that are widely used in industrial and fundamental research applications. Copper surfaces are often exposed to hydrogen in the form of charged ions. The hydrogen ions can accelerate toward the surface, resulting in an accumulation of hydrogen below the surface. Harmless in low concentrations, prolonged hydrogen exposure can lead to dramatic changes on copper surfaces. This effect is visible to the naked eye in the form of blisters densely covering the exposed surface. Blisters are structural modifications that can affect the physical properties of the surface including, for example, vacuum dielectric strength. Using scanning electron microscopy we found that the blistering of the irradiated polycrystalline copper surface does not grow uniformly with ion fluence. Initially, only some grains exhibit blisters, while others remain intact. Our experiments indicate that grains with the {100} orientation are the most prone to blistering, while the grains oriented in the {110} are the most resistant to it. Moreover, we noticed that blisters assume different shapes correlating with specific grain orientation. Good agreement of experiments with the atomistic simulations explains the difference in the shapes of the blisters by specific behavior of dislocations within the FCC crystal structure. Moreover, our simulations reveal the correlation of the delay in blister formation on surfaces with certain orientations compared to the others with the dependence of the hydrogen penetration depth and the depth and amount of vacancies in copper on the orientation of the irradiated surface.