2022/10/10 by Max Boleininger, Daniel R. Mason, Boleininger, Max +5 · 4 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Fusion materials and technologies #Ion-surface interactions and analysis #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Nuclear materials and radiation effects
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2210.05010
openalex publication_date 2022/10/10 · openalex created_date 2022/10/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
At temperatures below the onset of vacancy migration, metals exposed to energetic ions develop dynamically fluctuating steady-state microstructures. Statistical properties of these microstructures in the asymptotic high exposure limit are not universal and vary depending on the energy and mass of the incident ions. We develop a model for the microstructure of an ion-irradiated metal under athermal conditions, where internal stress fluctuations dominate the kinetics of structural evolution. The balance between defect production and recombination depends sensitively not only on the total exposure to irradiation, defined by the dose, but also on the energy of the incident particles. The model predicts the defect content in the high dose limit as an integral of the spectrum of primary knock-on atom energies, with the finding that low energy ions produce a significantly higher amount of damage than high energy ions.