Understanding why dislocation loops are visible in Transmission Electron Microscopy: The Tungsten Case

Dislocation loops finely disperse in bulk W are generally visible to the transition electron microscopy (TEM) after irradiation. In the absence of strong interactions, these loops would normally diffuse very fast until being sunk at grain boundaries or at the dislocation network. In this work, we evaluate the strength of two pining effects that can explain the reason why they are nevertheless observed by TEM in bulk. On the one hand, we evaluate with density functional theory (DFT) the strength of binding between isolated loops and dissolved chemical impurities. Employing classical equations of diffusion, we estimate the resulting effective diffusion coefficient of loops. On the other hand, we consider the effect of mutual elastic interactions (MEI) between the loops, applying linear elasticity. We perform a large set of kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations, aimed at evaluating the effective diffusion coefficient, accounting for multiple interactions. Finally, we draw a map under which experimental condition (loop size and loop number density) what is the dominating pinning effect. Comparing with a large database of experimental TEM evidence, we conclude that pinning by dissolved impurities is the dominating effect.