A thin foil sink strength with bulk recombination

The analytical evaluation of sink strengths for point defect sinks plays a central role in the rate theory of void swelling, irradiation creep and growth. However, previous rigorous analyses have neglected the effect of bulk recombination on the form of the various sink strengths. In this paper for the first time, a new sink strength is derived for the thin foil sink which includes bulk recombination directly. The result is compared with those from numerical calculations including bulk recombination explicitly, and with a previous foil surface sink strength derived by neglecting bulk recombination. The new approach is found to lead to excellent agreement with the numerical calculations, and it should be possible to extend the method to the other sink types without difficulty. (author)