The stability of precipitates in an irradiation environment

Radiation hardening revisited: role of intracascade clustering

Experimental observations related to the initiation of plastic deformation in metals and alloys irradiated with fission neutrons have been analyzed. The experimental results, showing irradiation-induced increase in the upper yield stress followed by a yield drop and plastic instability, cannot be explained in terms of conventional dispersed-barrier hardening because (a) the grown-in dislocations are not free, and (b) irradiation-induced defect clusters are not rigid indestructible Orowan obstacles. A new model called ‘cascade-induced source hardening’ is presented where glissile loops produced directly in cascades are envisaged to decorate the grown-in dislocations so that they cannot act as dislocation sources. The upper yield stress is related to the breakaway stress which is necessary to pull the dislocation away from the clusters/loops decorating it. The magnitude of the breakaway stress has been estimated and is found to be in good agreement with the measured increase in the initial yield stress in neutron irradiated copper.

Radiation hardening revisited: Role of intracascade clustering

Nucleation of damage centres in single crystal silicon held at room temperature and bombarded in a “random” direction with light ions is not at all times heterogeneous, as has sometimes been assumed. Homogeneous nucleation of interstitial clusters occurs at low ion fluences and this is characterized, for an extremely short period, by a linear dependence of the state of disorder on ion fluence, followed by a longer period during which disorder a (fluence)1/2. During these periods of ‘nucleation’ and ‘primary growth’ small interstitial clusters behave as unsaturable traps. For higher fluences there is a smooth transfer to a form of damage increase which is not of displacement cascade origin. In this period of ‘secondary growth’ the state of disorder varies linearly with ion fluence, and interstitial clusters behave as nucleation traps. It is shown how marked effects on the state of disorder due to changes in the mass of the bombarding ion, in the flux of the impinging beam, or in the temperature an...

Clarence H. Hinrichs

Papers

The Interaction of Radiation with Solids