Uranium vacancy mobility at the Σ5 symmetric tilt and Σ5 twist grain boundaries in UO2

Abstract

Abstract Ionic transport at grain boundaries in oxides dictates a number of important phenomena, from ionic conductivity to sintering to creep. For nuclear fuels, it also influences fission gas bubble nucleation and growth. Here, using a combination of atomistic calculations and object kinetic Monte Carlo (okMC) simulations, we examine the kinetic pathways associated with uranium vacancies at two model grain boundaries in UO2. The barriers for vacancy motion were calculated using the nudged elastic band method at all uranium sites at each grain boundary and were used as the basis of the okMC simulations. For both boundaries considered - a simple tilt and a simple twist boundary - the mobility of uranium vacancies is significantly higher than in the bulk. For the tilt boundary, there is clearly preferred migration along the tilt axis as opposed to in the perpendicular direction while, for the twist boundary, migration is essentially isotropic within the boundary plane. These results show that cation defect mobility in fluorite-structured materials is enhanced at certain types of grain boundaries and is dependent on the boundary structure with the tilt boundary exhibiting higher rates of migration than the twist boundary.