Spectroscopic insights on defects in self-irradiated natural Zircon: A natural analogue for slag host matrix for Zr-metallic wasteform.

Zircon is a proposed slag host matrix associated with the metallic wasteform route developed for Zr-hull management. This study de-alienates the nature of radiation damage in Zr- and Si- sublattice in self-irradiated zircon matrices under long term of geological times using a natural analogue approach. To address this, self-irradiated reddish-brown zircon from Tamil Nadu, India was characterized using spectroscopic techniques such as X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy and Photoluminescence (PL) combined with Monte Carlo Based SRIM calculations.