This research demonstrates improved radiation resistance and mechanical property in nanostructured metals, indicating adaptive martensitic transformation in extreme conditions.
Materials typically experience serious microstructure and performance degradations under irradiation in nuclear reactors. To explore radiation-resistant metals with high design flexibility is urgently requested for the safe application of nuclear energy. In this work, we discover an anti-radiation mechanism for this purpose in a gradient nanostructured nuclear grade austenitic stainless steel prepared by a flexible surface nano-crystallization approach. A special 3-dimensional microstructure network, consisting of low-energy grain boundaries, stacking faults, and dislocation networks, is introduced in the nanostructure, so that a large-scale adaptive martensitic transformation mechanism is activated under irradiation even at extremely high radiation doses and high temperatures. Consequently, the radiation resistance is significantly enhanced, while a superior mechanical property is retained, in nanostructured samples compared to coarse-grained counterparts. Results presented in this work thus explore a strategy to prepare radiation-resistant metals in future.
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Zhang et al. (2025) studied this question.
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