Ion-induced energy propagating front and migration of point defects in metals - II

We present a molecular dynamics study of the emission and propagation of an energy front from the core of an ion-induced collision cascade. Cu metal a nd PtCu dilute alloy were used as model cases. Both systems were modeled us ing embedded atom method potentials with periodic boundary conditions. We a lso used 3D visualization to inspect the temporal evolution of the energy d istribution in space. Additionally, we have calculated the temporal evoluti on of the atomic density and atomic migration inside the cascade core regio n and concluded that the interpretation of the chemical properties of IBM i n terms of the known mechanisms is not satisfactory. We also concluded that the mechanism proposed in a previous paper, and examined more carefully he re, is a good candidate to fulfill the conditions for the missing interpret ation. We also observe that the emission of the energy front plays an impor tant role in the evolution of the dynamics of the system inside the cascade core region. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.