Realizing irradiation-resistant metallic alloys by immobilizing induced defects

Materials capable of withstanding extreme conditions are essential for advanced fission and fusion technologies. The development of irradiation-tolerant structural materials hinges on the suppression of defect evolution that could lead to mechanical degradation. In this study, we present a novel strategy to effectively immobilize irradiation-induced defects through tuning the degree of local lattice distortion, an intrinsic characteristic of concentrated solid solution alloys. Our results show that increasing the degree of local lattice distortion significantly suppresses irradiation-induced microstructural changes. Notably, the single-phase binary Ni80Mo20 alloy, which exhibits the highest recorded degree of local lattice distortion (4.82% atomic size mismatch), demonstrates markedly frozen defect motion, resulting in negligible irradiation-induced effects. Our findings suggest that irradiation-resistant materials can be developed by engineering local lattice distortion, offering an easy-to-manipulate pathway to designing irradiation-tolerant metallic alloys. This study examines severe lattice distortions in concentrated solid solutions, enabling an energy landscape that immobilizes vacancies and interstitials which curbs their harmful evolution under irradiation conditions.