Effect of cascade overlap and C15 clusters on the damage evolution in Fe: An OKMC study

In order to investigate the long-term evolution of radiation-induced defects in the fission-and fusion-relevant material iron, we introduce cascade overlap effects into Object Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. In addition to cascade overlap, we study the effect of introducing discrete C15 Laves phase clusters into the simulations. By applying either, none, or both of these effects we identify how they influence the evolution of the system. We find that both cascade overlap and C15 clusters affect the evolution of the radiation damage in different ways and on different time scales. Cascade overlap is found to reduce the number of Frenkel pairs. On the other hand, the explicit consideration of C15 Laves phase clusters increases the accumulation of defects at low dose. The results are compared to Molecular Dynamics simulation results under similar conditions.

Automated summary

This study investigates the long-term evolution of radiation-induced defects in iron by introducing cascade overlap effects and discrete C15 Laves phase clusters into simulations. It is found that cascade overlap reduces the number of Frenkel pairs, while explicit consideration of C15 clusters increases the accumulation of defects at low dose.