Production bias and void swelling in the transient regime under cascade damage conditions

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Abstract
Molecular dynamics (MD) studies of collision cascades have firmly established that, in addition to clusters of vacancies, clusters of self-interstitial atoms (SIAs) are formed within the cascade volume during the thermal spike phase of a cascade. These clusters are formed in a segregated fashion such that the vacancy-rich core is surrounded by SIA clusters. At temperatures above stage V the vacancies evaporate from the vacancy cluster and diffuse into the medium whereas the SIA clusters remain thermally stable at temperatures even above the peak swelling temperature. This asymmetry in the production of free and mobile vacancies and SIAs gives rise to a production bias. Some of the vacancies evaporating from the vacancy-rich core annihilate at the SIA clusters surrounding it and others escape into the medium. It is this escaping fraction of vacancies which determines the strength of the production bias. Diffusion calculations have been performed to estimate the magnitude of this escaping fraction of vacancies. The necessary cascade parameters for this calculation are obtained from MD simulation experiments. Almost 80% of vacancies retained in the vacancy-rich core of a 20 keV cascade are found to escape the cascade volume containing SIA clusters. We have taken this escape rate to be the effective vacancy production rate in the medium, and calculated the temporal evolution of SIA clusters, void size and swelling for fully annealed pure copper under neutron irradiation at 523 K. The general trends of the calculated swelling behaviour are found to be in agreement with experimental results. The present calculations provide further validity and support to the concept of production bias.

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