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Instruments / Technical Area	Publication Details	Published	Actions
E02-JEM ARM 300CF I20-Scanning-X-ray spectroscopy (XAS/XES)	Understanding irradiation damage in high-temperature superconductors for fusion reactors using high resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy Rebecca J. Nicholls , Sofia Diaz-Moreno , William Iliffe , Yatir Linden , Tayebeh Mousavi , Matteo Aramini , Mohsen Danaie , Chris R. M. Grovenor , Susannah C. Speller Communications Materials 3 DOI: 10.1038/s43246-022-00272-0 Diamond Proposal Number(s): [23408, 27236, 28846, 28480] Open Access Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: Understanding the effects of fast neutrons on high-temperature superconductors is of growing importance as new compact fusion reactors rely on these materials to generate the high magnetic fields needed to confine the plasma. The critical temperature of the most promising candidate material for small-scale fusion devices, rare-earth barium cuprate, is known to decrease monotonically with radiation dose, indicating the generation of lattice defects everywhere in the material. Here, we use high-energy-resolution X-ray absorption spectroscopy to probe how the local environment around the copper atoms is influenced by point defects induced by He+ ion irradiation in the oxygen sublattice. Density functional theory calculations are used to interpret spectral features and we find clear evidence that ion irradiation significantly disrupts the bonding environment around the copper atoms in the copper-oxygen planes responsible for superconductivity in this compound. We propose the generation of a specific Frenkel defect that is consistent with our experimental results. Our results challenge previous assumptions in the literature that irradiation produces point defects only in the chain sites. In addition, we show that partial recovery is possible by annealing at modest temperatures, which may have implications for the operation of superconducting fusion magnets.	Aug 2022
	Analysing neutron radiation damage in YBa2Cu3O7-x high temperature superconductor tapes Y. Linden , W. R. Iliffe , G. He , M. Danaie , D. X. Fischer , M. Eisterer , S. C. Speller , C. R. M. Grovenor Journal Of Microscopy DOI: 10.1111/jmi.13078 Show Abstract ▼ Abstract: Superconducting windings will be necessary in future fusion reactors to generate the strong magnetic fields needed to confine the plasma, and these superconducting materials will inevitably be exposed to neutron damage. It is known that this exposure results in the creation of isolated damage cascades, but the presence of these defects alone is not sufficient to explain the degradation of macroscopic superconducting properties and a quantitative method is needed to assess the subtle lattice damage in between the clusters. We have studied REBCO coated conductors irradiated with neutrons to a cumulative dose of 3.3×1022 n*m−2 that show a degradation of both Tc and Jc values, and use HRTEM analysis to show that this irradiation introduces ∼10 nm amorphous collision cascades. In addition we introduce a new method for the analysis of these images to quantify the degree of lattice disorder in the apparently perfect matrix between these cascades. This method utilises Fast Fourier and Discrete Cosine Transformations of a statistically-relevant number of HRTEM images of pristine, neutron-irradiated, and amorphous samples, and extracts the degree of randomness in terms of entropy values. Our results show that these entropy values in both mid-frequency band FFT and DCT domains correlate with the expected level of lattice damage, with the pristine samples having the lowest and the fully amorphous regions the highest entropy values. Our methodology allows us to quantify ‘invisible’ lattice damage to and correlate these values to the degradation of superconducting properties, and also has relevance for a wider range of applications in the field of electron microscopy where small changes in lattice perfection need to be measured.	Dec 2021

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