High-dose ion irradiation damage in Fe28Ni28Mn26Cr18 characterised by TEM and depth-sensing nanoindentation

One of the key challenges for the development of high-performance fusion materials is to design materials capable of maintaining mechanical and structural integrity under the extreme levels of displacement damage, high temperature and transmutation rates. High-entropy alloys (HEAs) and other concentrated alloys have attracted attention with regards to their performance under fusion conditions. In recent years, a number of investigations of the irradiation responses of HEAs have peaked the community's interest in them, such as the work of Kumar et al. (2016), who examined Fe27Ni28Mn27Cr18 at doses as high as 10 dpa. In this work, we study Fe28Ni28Mn26Cr18 concentrated multicomponent alloy with irradiation doses as high as 20 dpa. We find the presence of Cr rich bcc precipitates in both the un-irradiated and in the irradiated condition, and the presence of dislocation loops only in the irradiated state. We correlate the features found with irradiation hardening by the continuous stiffness method (CSM) depth-sensing nanoindentation technique and see that the change in the bulk hardness increases significantly at 20 dpa for temperatures 450 °C. These results indicate that the alloy is neither stable as a single phase after annealing at 900 °C, nor particularly resistant to irradiation hardening.