Speaker
Description
The purpose of this presentation is to review the response of engineering materials to irradiation and the mechanisms associated radiation damage in the solid state. This topic will be introduced by considering the partitioning between electronic and nuclear energy losses, both of which are important in solids. In this first of two presentations, we will examine the physics of ionization, a topic familiar to most everyone in the field of health physics. Specifically, we will examine how ionization loss mechanisms for energetic ions in engineering solids compare with ionization effects in, say, air or water. We will then consider the transition from so-called "Bethe-Bloch" ion stopping to "velocity-dependent" stopping at lower ion energies. Radiation damage examples to be presented will include electronic stopping effects such as point defect-induced optical effects (e.g., color centers in insulators and gemstones). We will also consider swift heavy ion stopping effects in metals and ceramics.
