Primary radiation damage formation in nano-crystalline iron

Full text of publication follows: Large scale molecular dynamics simulations of atomic displacement cascades have been used to investigate primary damage formation in nano-crystalline. A statistically significant number of simulations were carried out at a range of cascade energies and temperatures in order to compare the results with a large database of simulations previously completed in single crystal iron. The same modified Finnis-Sinclair interatomic potential for iron was used in order to have a direct comparison with this database. The variation in cascade size with energy along with a varying grain size demonstrate the influence of grain boundaries as a sink for mobile defects during the cascade cooling phase. Grain boundary type (misfit) was also examined as a parameter influencing cascade defect survival. (authors)