DAMAGE IN METALS FROM MEV HEAVY-IONS

Despite the long-held belief that MeV-ion initiated damage in metals arises only from nuclear recoils, recently it has been convincingly established that at high levels of ion energy loss to electronic excitation (similar to 1 keV/Angstrom) the response of some metals is significantly influenced. In this paper I present a simple model of how this occurs that is in good agreement with the extensive experimental data available for damage produced by GeV heavy ions in Fe. The parameters of the model behave in a reasonable fashion for other metals where these effects are observed (Ti, Zr, Co, Nb, and Pt), which suggests that more detailed measurements on these materials could provide a useful check on the model's generality.