ON THE THEORY OF RADIATION DAMAGE AND RADIATION HARDENING

Technical Report · Sat Oct 31 04:00:00 EST 1959

OSTI ID:4280209

Seeger, A K

A theory of radiation damage of nonfissionable material is developed, which attempts mainly to explain the phenomena of radiation hardening. It is shown that these can be accounted for quantitatively in the following way: each fast knock-on atom creates a disturbed zone'' at the end of its trace; these zones harden the material, since they have to be cut by dislocation lines; and this-gives the observed temperature dependence of the critical shear stress of neutron-irradiated copper crystals and also the observed annealing behavior of radiation hardening. The recovery of electrical resistivity after irradiation is interpreted as follows (using copper as an example): the low temperature recovery (at about 40 deg K) after neutron bombardment is due to atomic rearrangemnents in the zones,'' whereas after electron bombardment it is due to the recombination of very close pairs of vacancies and interstitial atoms; isolated interstitial atoms are able to migrate in the temperature region at about 240 deg K, whereas vacancies can migrate only above room temperature. (auth)

• Research Organization: Max-Planck-Inst. fur Metallforschung, Stuttgart; Technischen Hochschule, Stuttgart
• NSA Number: NSA-13-007049
• OSTI ID: 4280209
• Report Number(s): A/CONF.15/P/998
• Country of Publication: Country unknown/Code not available
• Language: English

Related Subjects

ANNEALING
ATOMS
CONFERENCE
COPPER
CRYSTALS
DEFECTS
DIFFUSION
DISLOCATIONS
ELECTRIC CONDUCTIVITY
ELECTRONS
HARDNESS
INTERSTITIAL ATOMS
ION RECOMBINATION
IRRADIATION
LATTICES
LOW TEMPERATURE
NEUTRONS
RADIATION EFFECTS
RADIATION EFFECTS ON MATERIALS
RECOILS
RECOVERY
SHEAR
SWITZERLAND
TENSILE PROPERTIES
VACANCIES
ZONES