Transport, dissociation and rotation of small self-interstitial atom clusters in tungsten

Abstract

Numerical calculations have been performed to study the thermal motion of self-interstitial atom (SIA) clusters in tungsten (W). Molecular dynamics simulations show that SIA clusters exhibit a fast one-dimensional (1D) motion along the close packed 〈111〉 direction accompanied by a significant mass transport in this direction. A low frequency vibration mode is identified and considered to assist the motion of SIAs. The migration energy of SIA clusters are weakly dependent on their size in the average value of 0.019eV, which is due to the strong interaction between SIAs revealed by calculating the potential energy curve of artificially moving the SIAs along 〈111〉 direction as well as nudged elastic band (NEB) method. The rotation process of SIA cluster is studied by activation–relaxation technique and the results show that SIA cluster presents complex rotation process. Our results on the motion SIA cluster may provide updated understanding on the performance decay of materials related to SIA defects.