High versus low energy ion irradiation impact on functional properties of PLD-grown alumina coatings

•The current state of knowledge on PLD-grown Al2O3 coatings was reviewed.•PLD-grown amorphous Al2O3 coatings were irradiated with 250 keV and 1.2 MeV Au ions.•Influence of irradiations on mechanical properties was studied via nanoindentation.•The coating exhibit excellent room temperature radiation resistance.•Qualitative data obtained in low and high energy experiment are consistent. It is well known that ion irradiation can be successfully used to reproduce microstructural features triggered by neutron irradiation. Even though the irradiation process brings many benefits, it is also associated with several drawbacks. For example, the penetration depth of the ion in the material is very limited. This is particularly important for energies below MeV, ultimately reducing the number of available irradiation facilities. In addition to that, extracting information exclusively from the modified volume may be challenging. Therefore, extreme caution must be taken when interpreting obtained data. Our work aims to compare the findings of nanomechanical studies already conducted separately on thin amorphous ceramic coatings irradiated with ions of different energies, hence layers of different thicknesses. In this work, we show that in some instances, the 10% rule may be obeyed. In order to prove our finding, we compared results obtained for ion irradiated (with two energies: 0.25 and 1.2 MeV up to 25dpa) alumina coating system. Mechanical properties of pristine and ion-irradiated specimens were studied by nanoindentation technique. Interestingly, the qualitative relationship between nanohardness and irradiation damage level is very similar, regardless of the energy used. The presented work proves that for some materials (e.g., hard coatings), the qualitative assessment of the mechanical changes using nanoindentation might be feasible even for shallow implantation depths.