Oxidation-Induced Amorphization of Niobium Precipitates in Zirconium Alloys

Abstract

This article is a commentary on our previous work entitled “Reassessment of oxidation-induced amorphization and dissolution of Nb precipitates in Zr-Nb nuclear fuel cladding tube”, published in Acta Materialia in 2017. The highlight of this 2017 paper is a discovery that solid-state amorphization can occur even when the motion of atoms (or more precisely, all constituent elements of the amorphous material) is not frozen-in. Although judging from the highlight, this work is a fundamental study of amorphous materials, it was originally performed under an engineering research program on nuclear materials, irrelevant to amorphous. The inside story is revealed: how such a fundamental discovery was born out of engineering research.