LAUSR

Abstract In the design of used nuclear fuel containers for deep geological repositories, copper is considered to be a suitable and long-lived barrier for corrosion resistance. The microstructures of state-of-the-art copper materials used in this application produced through extrusion, a grain boundary engineered electrodeposition technique and cold spraying were studied via electron backscattered diffraction. Desirable microstructural characteristics for localized corrosion resistance of pure copper were compiled from the literature considering grain size, grain boundary character distribution, and crystallographic texture. The subject copper materials were found to have favourable microstructures for localized corrosion resistance, in particular, a high fraction of special grain boundaries, especially Σ3 twins, rendering them suitable for the given application.