PNNL

Abstract

A series of kinetic Monte Carlo computer experiments performed on idealized systems clearly reveals the dramatic effects of 1D migration of SIA crowdion clusters on the stability of void lattices. In the presence of migrating SIA, void lattices are shown to be unstable under pure 3D SIA migration, but they are extremely stable, relative to random arrays of voids, under 1D SIA migration. Void lattices remain stable even under the condition of fairly frequent changes in the Burgers vectors of the 1-D migrating SIA clusters. Clusters with average 1-D path segments having lengths on the order of the nearest neighbor distance in the void lattice can maintain the stability of void lattices.