Influence of thermal barrier effect of grain boundaries on bulk cascades in alpha-zirconium revealed by molecular dynamics simulation

The effect of grain boundaries (GBs) on bulk cascades in nano-structured alpha-zirconium has been studied by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. It turns out that the existence of GBs increases the defect productivity in grains, suggesting that the GBs may act as a thermal barrier and postpone the annihilation of defects within grains. Moreover, it is found that the thermal barrier effect of GBs facilitates the shift of symmetric tilt GBs to the grain with higher temperature, and the smaller the tilt angle is, the easier the boundary shift will be. Thus, the influence of GBs on radiation damage in the nano-structured materials comes from the competition between damage increase in grains and defect annihilation at GBs.