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

This paper reports new in situ electrical resistance results about the giant plastic deformation process occurring in amorphous Fe(85)B(15) irradiated with swift heavy ions, which lead to revisit the description of this phenomenon. Above an electronic energy loss of similar to 25 keV nm(-1) the growth starts at the very beginning of the irradiation, whereas below this value no initial growth is observed due to the necessity of predamaging the original material to induce the deformation. Increasing the irradiation temperature leads to a strong reduction of the growth rate, but does not affect significantly the electronic energy loss threshold for the observation of an initial growth. These results are discussed in the framework of theoretical calculations based on a thermal spike model. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.