Effect of grain boundary on the mechanical behaviors of irradiated metals: a review

The design of high irradiation-resistant materials is very important for the development of next-generation nuclear reactors. Grain boundaries acting as effective defect sinks are thought to be able to moderate the deterioration of mechanical behaviors of irradiated materials, and have drawn increasing attention in recent years. The study of the effect of grain boundaries on the mechanical behaviors of irradiated materials is a multi-scale problem. At the atomic level, grain boundaries can effectively affect the production and formation of irradiation-induced point defects in grain interiors, which leads to the change of density, size distribution and evolution of defect clusters at grain level. The change of microstructure would influence the macroscopic mechanical properties of the irradiated polycrystal. Here we give a brief review about the effect of grain boundaries on the mechanical behaviors of irradiated metals from three scales: microscopic scale, mesoscopic scale and macroscopic scale.