Detection of point defects upon ion irradiation by means of precipitate coherency

Transmission electron microscopy has been widely used to investigate the radiation-damage microstructures, but has limitations when observing point defects due to its resolution limit. In the present study, a dilute Cu–Co alloy, which is a typical precipitation-hardened alloy, has been selected to investigate the formation and the mobility of point defects upon ion irradiation, during which the coherent precipitates lose their coherency and exhibit incoherent strain contrast, and the coherency loss can be used to detect the point defects.