Modeling injected interstitial effects on void swelling in self-ion irradiation experiments

Heavy ion irradiations at high dose rates are often used to simulate slow and expensive neutron irradiation experiments. However, many differences in the resultant modes of damage arise due to unique aspects of heavy ion irradiation. One such difference was recently shown in pure iron to manifest itself as a double peak in void swelling, with both peaks located away from the region of highest displacement damage. In other cases involving a variety of ferritic alloys there is often only a single peak in swelling vs. depth that is located very near the ion-incident surface. We show that these behaviors arise due to a combination of two separate effects: 1) suppression of void swelling due to injected interstitials, and 2) preferential sinking of interstitials to the ion-incident surface, which are very sensitive to the irradiation temperature and displacement rate. Care should therefore be used in collection and interpretation of data from the depth range outside the Bragg peak of ion irradiation experiments, as it is shown to be more complex than previously envisioned. - Highlights: • A model of the spatially dependent point defect kinetics equations with injected interstitials has been implemented. • The results predict a double peak in the void nucleation rate, helping to explain a recent experiment. • The double peak is predicted to be evident within a narrow (+/− 30 °C) temperature window for self-irradiation of pure iron. • The ballistic damage profile may not match the resultant void swelling profile from ion irradiation experiments.