About properties of point defects in metals

In the following we discuss some selected features of the different radiation damage models in fcc materials and show that the properties of point defects are different from those commonly accepted for more than 30 years. There is evidence that crowdions are stable in some materials, that interstitials migrate almost freely in recovery stage III (ambient temperature in copper) and not in recovery stage IE (at 65 K in copper), that consequently their mobility is a factor 109 smaller than commonly assumed, and finally that vacancies migrate in recovery stage IV (above 100 C in copper). The results obtained for Au, Cu and Al are discussed together with results obtained for alloys formed with the respective metals. We discuss some results of experiments which show that the interactions between point defects and especially between point defects and sinks are much larger than previously assumed and that they are so large that the rate equations used for calculations of the changes of defect concentrations during irradiation are not applicable in most cases, and finally that the migration activation energies of defects decrease with increasing high energy particle flux