Stability and mobility of defect clusters and dislocation loops in metals

According to the production bias model, glissile defect clusters and small dislocation loops play an important role in the microstructural evolution during irradiation under cascade damage conditions. The atomic scale computer simulations carried out in recent years have clarified many questions about the structure and properties of glissile clusters of self-interstitial atoms that are formed directly in the cascade volume. It has been found that such clusters consist of sets of crowdions and are highly mobile in the crowdion direction. Very recently, one-dimensional glide of similar character has been observed in the computer simulation of small vacancy loops in α-Fe. In the present paper we summarise results obtained by molecular dynamics simulations of defect clusters and small dislocation loops in α-Fe(bcc) and Cu(fcc). The structure and stability of vacancy and interstitial loops are reviewed, and the dynamics of glissile clusters assessed. The relevance and importance of these results in establishing a better understanding of the observed differences in the damage accumulation behaviour between bcc and fcc metals irradiated under cascade damage conditions are pointed out.