The effect of C concentration on radiation damage in Fe–Cr–C alloys

Using a recently developed analytical bond-order potential for the complete ternary system, we performed molecular dynamics simulations of the primary radiation damage by displacement cascades in different Fe–Cr–C model alloys. We compared results obtained with this new potential to previous studies employing potentials for the binary Fe–Cr and Fe–C systems. We analysed the effect of C concentration on the number of Frenkel pairs produced by the cascades, as well as on clustering of vacancies and self-interstitial atoms (SIAs), and on the Cr and C content in the defects. The effect of C concentration on defect production was negligible, except at very high concentrations of over 1 at.% C. The main effect was in the Cr content of clustered SIAs, which increased with increasing C concentration