Mechanical Properties of Borosilicate Glass with Different Irradiation of Heavy Ions

To understand the evolutions in mechanical properties of borosilicate glass under irradiation is significant for evaluating its performance after long-term interaction with irradiation environment. In this study, borosilicate glass samples were irradiated with 0.3 MeV P-ions, 4 MeV Kr-ions, 5 MeV Xe-ions and 8 MeV Au-ions, respectively. Modification of the samples' mechanical properties before and after radiation was investigated with nano-indentation measurement. With increase of irradiation dose, both hardness and modulus of samples irradiated with P, Kr, Xe and Au ions drop and then saturate at 0.1 dpa. The trends of hardness variations for the sample irradiated with four kinds of ions at different energies are similar, and the change of modulus also follows the same rule. The maximum variation of NBS2 sample' hardness and modulus are about 35% and 18%, respectively. The grazing incident X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) was employed to analyze the phase structure. The results indicate that borosilicate glass still remains amorphous after irradiation. The microstructure evolutions of irradiated borosilicate glasses were characterized by Raman spectroscopy. The decrease of network polymerization and the increase of structural disorder are suggested by Raman spectra. In addition, the results also suggest that the main factor for the evolutions of the hardness and modulus of the borosilicate glass under ion irradiation is the change of the deformation of glass network, which was caused by nuclear energy deposition in samples.