Szymon L. Daraszewicz

The nature of high-energy radiation damage in iron

Understanding and predicting a materials performance in response to high-energy radiation damage, as well as designing future materials to be used in intense radiation environments, requires knowledge of the structure, morphology and amount of radiation-induced structural changes. We report the results of molecular dynamics simulations of high-energy radiation damage in iron in the range 0.2-0.5 MeV. We analyze and quantify the nature of collision cascades both at the global and the local scale. We observe three distinct types of damage production and relaxation, including reversible deformation around the cascade due to elastic expansion, irreversible structural damage due to ballistic displacements and smaller reversible deformation due to the shock wave. We find that the structure of high-energy collision cascades becomes increasingly continuous as opposed to showing sub-cascade branching as reported previously. At the local length scale, we find large defect clusters and novel small vacancy and interstitial clusters. These features form the basis for physical models aimed at understanding the effects of high-energy radiation damage in structural materials.

Electronic effects in high-energy radiation damage in iron

Electronic effects have been shown to be important in high-energy radiation damage processes where a high electronic temperature is expected, yet their effects are not currently understood. Here, we perform molecular dynamics simulations of high-energy collision cascades in α-iron using a coupled two-temperature molecular dynamics (2T-MD) model that incorporates both the effects of electronic stopping and electron-phonon interaction. We subsequently compare it with the model employing electronic stopping only, and find several interesting novel insights. The 2T-MD results in both decreased damage production in the thermal spike and faster relaxation of the damage at short times. Notably, the 2T-MD model gives a similar amount of final damage at longer times, which we interpret to be the result of two competing effects: a smaller amount of short-time damage and a shorter time available for damage recovery.

Atomistic two-temperature modelling of ion track formation in silicon dioxide

We study swift-heavy-ion track formation in α-quartz using the two-temperature molecular dynamics (2T-MD) model realised as a concurrent multiscale scheme. We compare the simulated track radii to the existing experimental ones obtained from small-angle X-ray scattering and Rutherford backscattering experiments. The 2T-MD model provides an explanation of the origin of the track radii saturation at high electronic stopping power. Furthermore, we study the track structure and show that defects formed outside the region of density fluctuations after a swift-heavy-ion impact may explain the conflicting track radii produced by the two experimental techniques.

Determination of transient atomic structure of laser-excited materials from time-resolved diffraction data

The time evolution of the Bragg peaks of photo-excited gold nanofilms is measured using transmission ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) with 3.0 MeV electron pulses and the corresponding structure evolution is calculated using two-temperature molecular dynamics (2T-MD). The good agreement obtained between the measured and calculated Bragg peaks, over the full experimental timescale, enables the lattice temperature effects and the structural changes to be disentangled for the first time. The agreement demonstrates that 2T-MD is a reliable method for solving the inverse problem of structure determination of laser irradiated metals in UED measurements.

The influence of the electronic specific heat on swift heavy ion irradiation simulations of silicon.

The swift heavy ion (SHI) irradiation of materials is often modelled using the two-temperature model. While the model has been successful in describing SHI damage in metals, it fails to account for the presence of a bandgap in semiconductors and insulators. Here we explore the potential to overcome this limitation by explicitly incorporating the influence of the bandgap in the parameterisation of the electronic specific heat for Si. The specific heat as a function of electronic temperature is calculated using finite temperature density functional theory with three different exchange correlation functionals, each with a characteristic bandgap. These electronic temperature dependent specific heats are employed with two-temperature molecular dynamics to model ion track creation in Si. The results obtained using a specific heat derived from density functional theory showed dramatically reduced defect creation compared to models that used the free electron gas specific heat. As a consequence, the track radii are smaller and in much better agreement with experimental observations. We also observe a correlation between the width of the band gap and the track radius, arising due to the variation in the temperature dependence of the electronic specific heat.

Determination of the electron–phonon coupling constant in tungsten

We used two methods to determine the effective electron-phonon coupling constant (G 0) in tungsten. Our first principles calculations predict G 0 = 1.65 × 1017 W m−3 K−1. The temporal decay of the femtosecond-resolution optical reflectivity for a (100) surface of bulk W was measured using a pump-probe scheme and analysed using ab initio parameterised two temperature model, which includes both the effects of the electron-phonon coupling and thermal conduction into bulk. This analysis gives G 0 = 1.4(3) × 1017 W m−3 K−1, in good agreement with the theoretical prediction. The described effective method of calculating and measuring G0 in bulk materials can be easily extended to other metals.

Domain decomposition of the two-temperature model in dl_poly_4

ABSTRACTIncluding the effects of excited electrons in classical simulations, at the level of the two-temperature model, involves the coupling of a grid-based finite-difference solver for a heat diffusion equation and classical molecular dynamics simulations with an inhomogeneous thermostat. Simulation of large systems requires domain decomposition of both particle-based and grid-based techniques. Starting with the CCP5 flagship code dl_poly_4 as the domain-decomposed molecular dynamics code, we devised a method to divide up temperature grids among processor cores in a similar fashion, including the appropriate communications between cores to deal with boundaries between grid divisions. This article gives the outline of how the domain decomposition of the temperature grids was achieved, as well as some example applications of the two-temperature model implementation in dl_poly_4.