Simulation of grain growth in nanocrystalline nickel induced by ion irradiation

Molecular dynamics simulations of 5 keV cascades in nanocrystalline nickel with grain sizes of 5 and 10 nm are presented. If the spike volume is exceeding the grain size or overlapping the grain boundary (GB) area we observe ion-beam induced grain growth for both grain sizes. In contrast cascades located in the grain volume lead to the formation of vacancies and interstitials, where the latter are mostly accommodated by the GBs upon annealing. Finally, we show that ion-beam induced grain growth is a direct result of recrystallisation of the thermal spike and therefore inherently different to grain growth observed in long time thermal annealing simulations.