Displacement damage rate dependence of defect cluster formation in α-Fe during irradiation

Formation kinetics of defect clusters in pure iron during irradiation has been numerically investigated by reaction rate theory, with focusing on nucleation process of vacancy clusters (voids) and self-interstitial-atoms (SIA) clusters under a wide range of atomic displacement damage rate (dpa rate) and temperature conditions. In the rate theory model, the size dependence of thermal stability of a defect cluster is treated for a wide range of cluster size. The numerical analysis shows that the nucleation processes of voids and SIA-clusters are quite different from each other. As to the voids, the nucleation rate of voids depends much on temperature and dpa rate, and has the individual peak temperature for each dpa rate, during which the peak temperature increases with increasing dpa rate. This tendency for void nucleation is similar to that for void swelling observed in experiments. As to the SIA-clusters, the nucleation rate of SIA-clusters does not depend much on temperature and has no peak temperatures because of the relatively high thermal stability of an SIA-cluster, indicating that the conventional model (di-interstitial model) is applicable to describe the nucleation of SIA-clusters in a wide range of temperature.