Development of Software for Determining the Parameters of Pores and Segregations of Alloying Elements in Austenitic Steels after Ion Irradiation

SwellingProfile and ElementProfile software packages were developed to construct swelling profiles when processing cross-cut images obtained using scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). These packages also make it possible to calculate the distribution profiles of chemical elements near the boundaries of vacancy pores and along the ion-beam path in materials irradiated to relatively large damaging doses. They were applied to analyze the vacancy swelling in 08Kh18N10T steel irradiated with nickel ions (with preliminary helium implantation) at a temperature of 625°C up to the peak damaging doses of ~300 dpa. Two maxima are revealed in the plotted swelling profile, which are due to the formation of two systems of pores of different sizes. A comparative analysis showed that the implanted-nickel profile correlates well with the calculations performed within SRIM-2008.