Annealing of defects in Fe after MeV heavy-ion irradiation

We report a study of recovery dynamics, followed by in situ resistivity measurements after 100 MeV oxygen ion irradiation, in cold rolled Fe at 300 K. Scaling behavior with microstructural density and temperature of the sample have been used to establish stress-induced defects formed during irradiation as a new type of sink. The dynamics after irradiation has been shown to be due to migration of defects to two types of sinks, i.e. stress-induced defects as variable sinks and internal surfaces as fixed sinks. Experimental data obtained under various experimental conditions have been fitted to theoretical curves. The parameters thus obtained from fitting are employed to establish the effect of electronic energy loss and temperature on the recovery dynamics and stress associated with variable sinks.