Evolution of dislocation loops in annealed iron pre-irradiated with hydrogen ion in high-voltage electron microscope

Abstract The nature of dislocation loops in the annealed pure iron pre-irradiated with hydrogen ion at room temperature was studied by the evolution of loops under electron irradiation in high-voltage electron microscope (HVEM). Only interstitial-type loops were observed when annealed and electron irradiated at 350 °C but only vacancy-type loops formed at temperature higher than 500 °C. When annealed at temperatures from 450 °C to 490 °C, both interstitial-type and vacancy-type loops formed simultaneously in the specimen and vacancy-type loops accounted for an increasing fraction with increasing annealing temperature, from 28.5% at 450 °C to 55% at 490 °C. The bias factor of interstitial-type and vacancy-type loops was compared based on the growth rate or shrinkage rate of the dislocation loops. The bias factor of interstitial-type loops was demonstrated to be higher than that of vacancy-type loops at all three annealing temperatures.