Influence of high-fluence neutron and/or proton irradiation on the optical properties and microstructure of rutile

Rutile (TiO2) single crystals of (1 1 0) or (0 0 1) orientation were irradiated by high fluence reactor neutrons with the fluence of 1 x 10(23) m(-2), by protons with the energy of 0.3-18 MeV and the fluence from 1 x 10(18) to 1.9 X 10(22) m(-2), respectively. UV-VIS-IR, LRS and HRTEM were used to analyze the optical properties and microstructure of samples. The UV-VIS-IR results showed that high-fluence neutron and proton irradiation induce similar variation of optical properties of samples, especially absorption plateau appear. LRS results showed that the relative intensity of common vibration modes is different for different plane, both high fluence neutron irradiation and proton irradiation induce similar variations of the frequency and intensity of Raman vibration modes in the same orientated samples, and proton irradiation also induces several new vibration modes appear. High fluence irradiation induced large defect clusters, i.e. stacking faults, which is demonstrated by HRTEM observation. In addition, the difference between neutron-induced irradiation effect and proton-induced irradiation effect has been also discussed. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.