Probing structural disorder in zircon by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD): Radiation damage and Kikuchi pattern

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) was employed to probe the structural order of a zoned radiation -damaged zircon (ZrSiO4) on the sub-micron scale. The amorphous fraction of the growth-zones is in the range of-45-80%, due to variations in the amount of incorporated uranium and thorium (-0.22- 0.43 wt% UO2 and-0.02-0.08 wt% ThO2) and the resulting alpha-decay events over time. The obtained Kikuchi patterns' band contrast (bc) and band slope (bs) are indicative of the degree of atomic-scale or-der. The excellent correlation of both parameters with the evolution of the elastic modulus validates the methods reliability.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )