An attempt was made to provide a theoretical framework for the effect of recoil energy upon damage accumulation. Such accumulation under Frenkel pair production (due, for instance, to 2.5MeV electrons) was treated in terms of the standard rate theory model; in which the evolution of the defect microstructure under cascade damage conditions (such as 3.0MeV protons or fission neutron bombardment) was calculated by using the production bias model. Theoretical results (in agreement with experimental results) showed that damage accumulation was very sensitive to the recoil energy and, under cascade damage conditions, could be treated only within the framework of the production bias model. The intracascade clustering of self-interstitial atoms, and the properties of self-interstitial atom clusters (such as 1-dimensional diffusional transport and thermal stability) were found to be the main reasons for recoil energy-dependent vacancy supersaturation. The vacancy supersaturation was the main driving force for void nucleation and void swelling. In the case of Frenkel-pair production, the experimental results were found to be consistent with the standard rate theory model; with a dislocation bias of 2%.

On Recoil-Energy-Dependent Defect Accumulation in Pure Copper - II. Theoretical Treatment. S.I.Golubov, B.N.Singh, H.Trinkaus: Philosophical Magazine A, 2001, 81[10], 2533-52