Evolution of small defect clusters in ion-irradiated 3C-SiC: combined cluster dynamics modeling and experimental study

Abstract

Distribution of black spot defects and small clusters in 1 MeV krypton irradiated 3C-SiC has been investigated using advanced scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and TEM. We find that two thirds of clusters smaller than 1 nm identified in STEM are invisible in TEM images. For clusters that are larger than 1 nm, STEM and TEM results match very well. A cluster dynamics model has been developed for SiC to reveal processes that contribute to evolution of defect clusters and validated against the (S)TEM results. Simulations showed that a model based on established properties of point defects (PDs) generation, reaction, clustering, and cluster dissociation, is unable to predict black spot defects distribution consistent with STEM observations. This failure suggests that additional phenomena not included in a simple point-defect picture may contribute to radiation-induced evolution of defect clusters in SiC and using our model we have determined the effects of a number of these additional phenomena on cluster evolution. Using these additional phenomena it is possible to fit parameters within physically justifiable ranges that yield agreement between cluster distributions predicted by simulations and those measured experimentally.

arXiv comment33 pages, 10 figures, journal

References in corpus (6)

• Ab initio study of the migration of intrinsic defects in 3C-SiC
• High energy collision cascades in tungsten: dislocation loops structure and clustering scaling laws
• Elastic trapping of dislocation loops in cascades in ion-irradiated tungsten foils
• Precipitation kinetics of Al3Zr and Al3Sc in aluminum alloys modeled with cluster dynamics
• Direct observation of size scaling and elastic interaction between nano-scale defects in collision cascades
• Radiation-induced mobility of small defect clusters in covalent materials

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Parameter-free quantitative simulation of high dose microstructure and hydrogen retention in ion-irradiated tungsten
• Distribution of defect clusters in the primary damage of ion irradiated 3C-SiC
• Atomistic-Object Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of irradiation damage in tungsten
• Optimization of self-interstitial clusters in 3C-SiC with Genetic Algorithm
• Hybrid mean field and real space model for vacancy diffusion-mediated annealing of radiation defects