RADIATION DAMAGE IN ZIRCON AND MONAZITE - RADIATION DOSE-DEPENDENT STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS

Abstract

Monazite and zircon respond differently to ion irradiation and to thermal and irradiation-enhanced annealing. Monazite cannot be amorphized by 800 keV Kr+ ions at temperatures greater than 175°C; whereas, zircon can be amorphized at temperatures up to 740°C. The damage process (i.e., elastic interactions leading to amorphization) in radioactive minerals (metamictization) is basically the same as for the ion-beam-irradiated samples with the exception of the dose rate which is much lower in the case of natural samples. The crystalline-to-metamict transition in natural samples with different degrees of damage, from almost fully crystalline to completely metamict, is compared to the sequence of microstructures observed for ion-beam-irradiated monazite and zircon. The damage accumulation process, representing the competing effects of radiation-induced structural disorder and subsequent annealing mechanisms (irradiation-enhanced and thermal) occurs at much higher temperatures for zircon than for monazite. The amorphization dose, expressed as displacements per atom, is considerably higher in the natural samples, and the atomic-scale process leading to metamictization appears to develop differently.Ion-beam-induced amorphization data were used to calculate the α-decay-event dose required for amorphization in terms of a critical radionuclide concentration, i.e., the concentration above which a sample of a given age will become metamict at a specific temperature. This equation was applied to estimate the reliability of U-Pb ages, to provide a qualitative estimate of the thermal history of high-U natural zircons, and to predict whether actinide-bearing zircon or monazite nuclear waste forms will become amorphous (metamict) over long timescales.