Irradiation of crystalline non-metallic binary A x B y compounds with swift heavy-ions results in electronic excitation and damage track formation, beyond a threshold value of stopping power. As the cores of the cylindrical damage tracks are experimentally shown to be homogeneous, each ion is supposed to deposit its energy over all atoms of the crystal involved in the interaction process. We assume that within an ionisation cylinder coaxial with the damage cylinder each atom, taken as isolated, undergoes n multiple ionisation events. Both A and B target atoms are progressively stripped of the same number n of electrons, beginning with the outer shell. Thus they change atomic configuration from e.g. A to (A− n)=A *. All ionised atoms (A * and B *) are ejected out of the ionisation cylinder, being spread in the damage cylinder where they form the [A *B] and the [AB *] starting compounds. By the segregation-charge transfer model, the interface between the crystalline A x B y matrix and the damage cylinder, containing the starting compounds, is enriched in one starting compound constituent, giving rise to non-equilibrium compositional and electronic density profiles. Charge transfer reactions simulate the local trend towards equilibrium restoration. Each reaction product is a dimer, considered as a cluster of an effective compound. The energy cost to introduce in the matrix an effective compound dimer and the difference between the sum of the formation enthalpies of both effective compounds and that of the irradiated compound are calculated. Qualitative differences are found between compounds undergoing amorphisation, or crystal structure formation under swift heavy-ion irradiation.