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A modified two temperature molecular dynamics (2T-MD) model for cascades

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Article number335901
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>22/05/2024
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter
Issue number33
Volume36
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Two-Temperature molecular dynamics (2T-MD) is a common approach for describing how electrons contribute to the evolution of a damage cascade by addressing their role in the redistribution of energy in the system. However, inaccuracies in 2TMD’s treatment of the high-energy particles have limited its utilisation. Here, we propose a reformulation of the traditional 2T-MD scheme to overcome this limitation by addressing the spurious double-interaction of high-energy atoms with electrons. We conduct a series of radiation damage cascades for 30, 50, and 100 keV primary knock-on atoms (PKA) in increasingly large cubic W cells. In the simulations, we employ our modified 2T-MD scheme along with other treatments of electron-phonon coupling to explore their impact on the cascade evolution and the number of remnant defects. The results suggest that with the proposed modification, 2T-MD simulations account for the temperature time evolution during the ballistic phase and remove arbitrary choices, thus providing a better description of the underlying physics of the damage process.