Kr irradiation effects and annealing behaviour of a monosilicated Nd-substituted fluorapatite studied by X-ray diffraction

摘要

A monosilicated sintered fluorapatite (Ca_9Nd(PO_4)_5(SiO_4)F_2, britholite) was irradiated in the electronic stopping power regime with 85.8 MeV Krypton ions. The induced damage was characterized by means of X-ray diffraction. Following the evolution of crystallographic lattice parameters and the characteristic changes in the X-ray diffraction spectra, we showed the progressive damaging of this material. By calculating an effective radius (R_e), damage in this britholite was quantified. The behaviour under thermal annealing was also studied by X-ray diffraction, using different durations of isothermal annealing (300℃) in order to follow the structural rebuilding of the crystallographic lattice. From the evolution of the peak areas, we concluded that there is a partial rebuilding of the structure. This variation may be divided in two steps, according to the lattice parameters changes.