Effect of Carbon Impurity Content on Microstructural Evolution in Neutron-Irradiated Alpha Iron: Cluster Dynamics Modeling

Abstract

ABSTRACTCluster dynamics (CD) modeling has been used to estimate the long-term evolution of point defect (PD) clusters. However, previous studies have often simplified the governing equations by assuming the maximum size of mobile self-interstitial atom (SIA) clusters and by ignoring the one-dimensional (1D) reaction kinetics of SIA loops. They have also conducted parameter fittings, such as the clustered fraction and the maximum size of clusters produced by collision cascade, to reproduce experimental data. In this study, in addition to modeling the 1D motion of SIA loops in the framework of the production bias model (PBM), reaction rates associated with carbon impurity atoms present in alpha iron were formulated to consider the trapping effect of one-dimensionally migrating SIA loops by a vacancy-carbon (V-C) complex that was shown to have strong bindings with SIA loops by previous atomistic simulations. Calculations results for neutron-irradiated alpha iron showed that the developed CD model can successfully reproduce the saturation trend of the number density of immobile SIA loops in contrast to the prediction using a model without the trapping effect.