Irradiation damage of shielding materials for fusion energy

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The development of advanced radiation shielding materials is critical to enabling safe operation of compact fusion reactors on a commercial basis. Tungsten carbide ceramics are front-running candidate materials due to their excellent thermal, mechanical, and shielding properties. However, relatively little is known about how these properties degrade under bombardment by fusion neutrons that will be experienced in operation.This project seeks to gain such a quantitative understanding by combining ion-irradiations at UK ion-beam facilities with state-of-the-art characterisation techniques at Imperial. The mechanical properties will be evaluated using micro-mechanical testing methods being developed at the Centre for Advanced Structural Ceramics. Property changes will in turn be interpreted through a detailed microstructural characterisation, including transmission electron microscopy to understand the morphology and character of radiation induced defects; and grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction to quantify irradiation-induced phase changes and how the above phenomena contribute to swelling.