Mechanism of formation and growth of (100) interstitial loops in ferritic materials

We propose a comprehensive mechanism for the formation and growth of (100) interstitial loops in α-Fe. This mechanism reconciles long-standing experimental observations of these defects in irradiated ferritic materials with recent atomistic simulations of collision cascades and defect cluster properties in Fe, in which highly mobile ½(111) clusters are seen to be the dominant feature. Hence, this work provides one of the necessary links to unify simulation with experiments in α-Fe and ferritic alloys subject to high-energy particle irradiation.