On the influence of grain boundaries on void growth

Abstract Growth behaviour of four individual voids has been studied using 1 MeV electron irradiation in a high voltage electron microscope. Direct evidence is presented to show that the growth rate of voids is reduced markedly as the distance between the growing voids and grain boundaries becomes smaller than the 'defect depleted zone width '. As soon as grain boundaries reach growing voids, the void growth is found to cease altogether. At a given damage rate a void isolated from grain boundaries and other voids is found to follow a growth law of the form d v ∝t i 0.63 where d v is the void size and t i is the irradiation time.