An In-Situ Platform for Studying Metal Films under Simultaneous Extreme Conditions in The SEM

We report on a novel technique for the in-situ characterization of a sample exposed to ion irradiation in a corrosive medium. A sample chamber has been built that can expose a metal film to a corrosive liquid environment and placed into the environmental scanning electron microscope (SEM) in line with the ion beam accelerator located at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies’ (CINT) Ion Beam Laboratory (IBL) at Sandia National Laboratory. In this work, we expose an epitaxial Fe thin film grown on MgO to 6 MeV Fe ions while the sample surface is exposed to pure H20, 0.1M NaCl, and 0.1M B4Na2O7 solutions. SEM imaging and post-mortem XEDS captured the complex oxide development on the surface over time. This experiment elucidates how the ion beam affected the complex oxide growth in the corrosive media, and how the surface oxide impacts further corrosion processes. This understanding will directly inform the development of new materials required for future nuclear energy sources.