Direct observation of the spatial distribution of primary cascade damage in tungsten

Abstract Recently we have presented direct experimental evidence for large defect clusters being formed in primary damage cascades in self-ion irradiated tungsten [Yi et al., EPL 110:36001 (2015)]. This large size is significant, as it implies that strong elastic interaction between the defects will affect their subsequent evolution, especially if defects are formed close together. Here we present a direct experimental observation of the separation between visible defects in self-ion irradiated tungsten, in the form of a 2d pairwise radial distribution function extracted from transmission electron micrographs (TEM). We also present a detailed analysis of the observed radial distribution function, and infer the probable size and shape of individual cascades. We propose and validate a simple exponential form for the spatial distribution of defects within a single cascade. The cascade statistics necessary have been acquired by developing an automated procedure for analysing black-dot damage in TEM micrographs. We confirm that the same model also produces a high-quality fit to the separation between larger defects observed in MD simulations. For the first time we present experimental evidence for the sub-nanometre-scale spatial distribution of defect clusters within individual cascades.