Effect of carbon on irradiation-induced grain-boundary phosphorus segregation in reactor pressure vessel steels using first-principles-based rate theory model

Abstract In this paper, we incorporated the effect of carbon atoms on the irradiation-induced grain-boundary phosphorus segregation into the rate theory model by considering a carbon atom as a trap site of vacancies and self-interstitial atoms, and simulated the grain-boundary phosphorus coverage in the reactor pressure vessel steels, A533B steels which were neutron-irradiated using the Halden reactor. As a result, by selecting the sink strength of vacancies and self-interstitial atoms, the simulation reproduced the experimental grain-boundary phosphorus coverage that was measured using the scanning Auger electron microprobe analysis. It was observed that the grain-boundary phosphorus coverage does not depend on the dose rate regardless of the presence of carbon atoms. Furthermore, it was confirmed that vacancies scarcely transport phosphorus atoms to grain-boundaries as compared to the transport by self-interstitial atoms and it was found that carbon atoms influence the irradiation-induced phosphorus segregation by mainly suppressing the migration of vacancies.