ALLOYS UNDER IRRADIATION

During the last two decades. some effort has been devoted to establish ing a phenomenology for alloys under irradiation, Theoretically, the e ffects of the defect supersaturation, sustained defect fluxes and ball istic mixing on solid solubility under irradiation can now be formulat ed in a unified manner, at least for the must simple cases: coherent p hase transformations and nearest-neighbor ballistic jumps. Even under such restrictive conditions, several intriguing features documented ex perimentally can be rationalized, sometimes in a quantitative manner a nd simple qualitative rules for alloy stability as a function of irrad iation conditions can be formulated. A quasi-thermodynamic formalism c an be proposed for alloys under irradiation. However, this point of vi ew has limits illustrated by recent computer simulations. (C) 1997 Els evier Science B.V.