Surface segregation during irradiation

Gibbsian adsorption is known to alter the surface composition of many alloys. During irradiation, four additional processes that affect the near-surface alloy composition become operative: preferential sputtering, displacement mixing, radiation-enhanced diffusion and radiation-induced segregation. Because of the mutual competition of these five processes, near-surface compositional changes in an irradiation environment can be extremely complex. Although ion-beam induced surface compositional changes were noted as long as fifty years ago, it is only during the past several years that individual mechanisms have been clearly identified. In this paper, a simple physical description of each of the processes is given, and selected examples of recent important progress are discussed. With the notable exception of preferential sputtering, it is shown that a reasonable qualitative understanding of the relative contributions from the individual processes under various irradiation conditions has been attained. However, considerably more effort will be required before a quantitative, predictive capability can be achieved.