Defects and Radiation Damage in Metals

Book excerpt: The study of radiation damage in solids generally has been stimulated by the technological demands of nuclear energy and space research. Professor Thompson's 1969 book discusses the basic atomic mechanisms which give rise to the main effects induced by radiation in metals, since it is in their relatively simple structures that the fundamental processes can be most easily identified. The first part of the book describes the nature of lattice defects in metal crystals. The presentation leads naturally into the discussion of radiation damage in the second part and recognises the important contribution that the study of irradiated metals has made to our general knowledge of defects. The wide coverage of this book includes developments in our understanding of collision cascades, of the clustering of point defects and the behaviour of impurities induced by irradiation.