Statistics of primary damage creation in high-energy displacement cascades in copper and zirconium

Abstract

A comparison of radiation defect creation in high-energy displacement cascades in two metals with close-packed crystal structures, namely FCC (Cu) and HCP (α-Zr) has been conducted. The report consolidates the results of molecular dynamic simulations of over 400 displacement cascades in copper and 240 cascades in zirconium. The simulations were carried out for a wide range of temperature (100–900K), and primary knock-on atom (PKA) energy (5–25keV). For both metals the dependence of the number of Frenkel pairs and the fraction of point defects in clusters on temperature and PKA energy were obtained. Similarities and differences in point defect cluster stability are contrasted for the two metals and the influence of material on the accumulation of primary damage is considered.