Defect production and annealing induced by electronic energy loss in pure metal

Abstract

This work reports on the theoretical studies of defect production and annealing induced by electronic energy loss S e in pure metal. The selected metal was α-iron in which irradiation effects produced by swift heavy ions have been well studied experimentally by Dunlop et al. [Nucl. Instr. and Meth. B 90 (1994) 330]. According to thermal spike model in metals and taking into account the principles of ion–solid interactions and thermal atomic jumps and migrations in solid, we have done numerical calculations of spatial distributions of vacancies and interstitials created by nuclear collisions, concentration-dependent thermal migration and recombination of existed defects and thermal defect generation for given swift heavy ion irradiations. The calculated results suggested that threshold S e values for defect annealing and production were about 15 and 38 keV/nm which are in agreement with experiments. The comparison of damage efficiencies deduced from our numerical calculations with experimental ones have shown that S e induced defect production and annealing in pure metal can be a result of thermal transient process.