Something new about the giant deformation of amorphous alloys irradiated with GeV ions

This paper reports new in situ electrical resistance results about the gian t plastic deformation process occurring in amorphous Fe85B15 irradiated wit h swift heavy ions, which lead to revisit the description of this phenomeno n. Above an electronic energy loss of similar to 25 keV nm(-1) the growth s tarts at the very beginning of the irradiation, whereas below this value no initial growth is observed due to the necessity of predamaging the origina l material to induce the deformation. Increasing the irradiation temperatur e leads to a strong reduction of the growth rate, but does not affect signi ficantly the electronic energy loss threshold for the observation of an ini tial growth. These results are discussed in the framework of theoretical ca lculations based on a thermal spike model. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. A ll rights reserved.