Spontaneous Recombination of Frenkel Pairs for Electron Irradiation

The damage rate for electron irradiation is calculated from the general equations for the spontaneous recombination of Frenkel pairs. The calculation uses the superposition approximation in which third order correlations are replaced by second order correlations. Comparison with the measurements of Dworschak et al. for 3 MeV electrons gives for copper an annealing volume, νa = 200 atomic volumes, and a fraction γ = 0.1 of interstitials, originally in unstable positions around their corresponding vacancies.