Fast low-temperature irradiation creep driven by athermal defect dynamics

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2401.13385
• Publication Date: 2024-01-01
• Authors: A. Feichtmayer; Max Boleininger; J. Riesch; Daniel R. Mason; Luca Reali; T. Höschen; M. Fuhr; T. Schwarz‐Selinger; R. Neu; S. L. Dudarev
• Keywords: Stress relaxation

The occurrence of high stress concentrations in reactor components is a still intractable phenomenon encountered fusion design. We observe and quantitatively model non-linear high-dose radiation mediated microstructure evolution effect that facilitates fast relaxation the most challenging low-temperature limit. In situ observations tensioned tungsten wire exposed to high-energy ion beam show internal up 2 GPa relaxes within minutes, with extent time-scale accurately predicted by parameter-free multiscale informed atomistic simulations. As opposed conventional notions creep, arises from self-organisation nanoscale crystal defects, athermally coalescing into extended polarized dislocation networks compensate alleviate external stress.