Mechanical response to swift ion irradiation-induced nano-tracks in silica

Abstract

Ion irradiation on dielectric materials produces several processes, such ionization and defect formation followed by a decay governed by thermal processes such as heat diffusion and atomic rearrangement. Finally in the irradiated region the mechanical properties are altered, strain and stress fields appear, a densification takes places and other properties such as the refractive index are affected. In order to simulate the mechanical response of silica to swift ion irradiation we use a methodology based on molecular dynamics (MD) and finite element methods (FEM). We use information from MD to obtain the local densification generated by an incoming swift ion. Finally we calculate the densification in the ion track using FEM. This method provides information on the strain and stress field along the material as a function of ion irradiation fluence. For this work an experimental campaign using Br ions from 5 to 50 MeV has been done at CMAM accelerator (Madrid). We measured the refractive index and we observe that for high fluences the refractive index decreases. The effect of the strain field on the density could explain the decrease in the refractive index. We check this hypothesis using our methodology coupling MD and FEM.