Hillocks created for amorphizable and non-amorphizable ceramics irradiated with swift heavy ions; TEM study

Ishikawa, Norito   ; Taguchi, Tomitsugu*; Okubo, Nariaki   

TEM method is applied to YFeO (YIG) and three fluorides (CaF, SrF and BaF) for observing hillocks. For YIG which is one of the amorphizable materials, hillocks are found to have amorphous feature which is consistent with amorphous feature of ion-tracks. For the fluorides, it is found that the hillocks do not exhibit amorphous feature, and they are composed of nano-crystallites. It is found for the first time that for YIG the hillock diameter is comparable to the ion-track diameter, whereas for the fluorides it is always larger than the ion-track diameter. The results indicate that recrystallization after transient melting plays an important role for formation of hillocks and ion-tracks in fluorides.