Atomic Defects in Metals · Ag

This chapter investigates the defect annealing of silver (Ag) by electrical resistivity measurements after low temperature irradiation with electrons and deuterons as well as thermal and fission neutrons. Annealing after quenching is shown and an example of the annealing after low temperature plastic deformation is given. There is an unusual behaviour of the amount of annealing within stage I for electron-irradiations; i.e. the increase of annealing with increasing irradiation dose is shown. This dose dependence is not observed for cascade damage as shown for the case of fission neutrons. In addition to the resistivity results there is support for the attribution of stage III to vacancy migration from the annealing behaviour observed by PAS and PAC that show the formation of vacancy clusters and/or the trapping of vacancies by impurities. Activation energies are calculated. Complex positron trapping reactions are observed during annealing of deformed silver. Final annealing depends on the cluster sizes and densities. Final annealing occurs between 540 K and 600 K after electron-irradiation and the broad annealing stage observed after quenching. Defect annealing after low temperature e^-- and n-irradiations has been investigated for several dilute Ag-alloys. Trapping radii have been determined for several alloys from damage rate measurements. Binding energies derived from the kinetic analysis of the annealing behaviour within the temperature range of stage III/IV are summarized. Properties of Frenkel pairs (FP), self-interstitial atoms (SIA), and vacancies (V) in pure Ag metal is illustrated.