Kinetics of gas bubble ensemble in supersaturated solid solution of point defects and gas atoms

Abstract The nodal line formalism is proposed to investigate the kinetics of a gas-pressurized bubble ensemble in a material supersaturated with vacancies, self-interstitials and gas atoms. The critical nuclei parameters were obtained using the general form of the growth rates and `hard sphere' equation of state for description of gas in bubbles. The detailed investigation of the relative arrangement of critical points of the nodal lines and the possible kinetic modes of evolution of gas-pressurized bubbles into voids that are primarily an agglomeration of vacancies is carried out. Comparison of the presented results with that obtained with the Mansur–Coghlan formalism is carried out.