Investigation of oxide particles in unirradiated ODS Eurofer by tomographic atom probe

Oxide dispersion strengthened steels possess better high-temperature creep and radiation resistance than conventionally produced ferritic/martensitic steels. This behaviour is mainly caused by the presence of highly dispersed and extremely stable oxide particles with diameters of a few nanometers. In this work the nanostructure of ODS Eurofer steel was investigated by means of tomographic atom probe and correlations with recent TEM and SANS studies were derived. The present investigation revealed nanoscaled clusters of typically 2 nm diameter containing not only yttrium and oxygen but also vanadium and nitrogen. Moreover, concentration of vanadium in particles was found to be higher than that of yttrium, which indicates the importance of these elements in cluster formation. The estimated average cluster number density is about 2 × 1024 m−3. These enriched zones might be evidently attributed to precursors of the larger precipitates observed by TEM. This conclusion is also supported by the similarities of the chemical composition inside enriched zones seen in both atomic probe and TEM data.