Development of the In-Situ Ion Irradiation SEM at Sandia National Laboratories

Monitoring materials evolution in extreme environments using in-situ techniques allows for increased insight into the active mechanisms behind materials transformations and an enhanced understanding of the temporal dependencies of a given materials response. These types of experiments are especially useful for studying the combinatorial effects of super-imposed environmental stressors, such as those posed by nuclear reactor and radiation environments. The In-situ Ion Irradiation Transmission Electron Microscope (I3TEM) at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) was developed to study such microstructural changes in thin, electron transparent specimens [1]. The capability to study the effects of radiation damage, high temperatures, mechanical stresses, and other environmental variables has been demonstrated in several publications [2-4]. However, the I3TEM does not allow for the study of mesoscale and surface transformation, and in-situ TEM experiments in general have been known to be subject to various thin-film effects. As such, a complementary microscopy capability enabling work at larger length scales has been developed in the In-situ Ion Irradiation Scanning Electron Microscope (I3SEM) facility.