Molecular dynamic simulation of disorder induced amorphization in pyrochlore.

The defect accumulation mechanism of amorphization has been studied for the La2Zr2O7 pyrochlore by means of classical molecular dynamic simulations. Present calculations show that the accumulation of cation Frenkel pairs is the main driving parameter for the amorphization process, while the oxygen atoms simply rearrange around cations. Under Frenkel pair accumulation, the structure follows the pyrochlore-fluorite-amorphous sequence. Present results consequently provide atomic-level interpretation to previous experimental irradiation observations of the two-step phase transition.