Irradiation-initiated plastic deformation in prestrained single-crystal copper

B Li and L Wang and WR Jian and JC E and HH Ma and SN Luo, NUCLEAR INSTRUMENTS & METHODS IN PHYSICS RESEARCH SECTION B-BEAM INTERACTIONS WITH MATERIALS AND ATOMS, 368, 60-65 (2016).

DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2015.12.011

With large-scale molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the response of elastically prestrained single-crystal Cu to irradiation as regards the effects of prestrain magnitude and direction, as well as PICA (primary knock-on atom) energy. Under uniaxial tension, irradiation induces such defects as Frenkel pairs, stacking faults, twins, dislocations, and voids. Given the high dislocation concentration, twins and quad-stacking faults form through overlapping of different stacking faults. Voids nucleate via liquid cavitation, and dislocations around void play a lesser role in the void nucleation and growth. Dislocation density increases with increasing prestrain and PICA energy. At a given prestrain, there exists a critical PICA energy for dislocation activation, which decreases with increasing prestrain and depends on crystallographic direction of the applied prestrain. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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