The preferential trapping of interstitials at dislocations

Abstract The swelling of metals during irradiation is due to the preferential drift of interstitials to dislocations thus allowing vacancies to condense in excess of interstitials at voids. Previously the dislocation preference for interstitials has been calculated from an isolated dislocation model, here the effect of the competition between neighbouring dislocations as interstitial sinks is assessed. It is found that the effect is appreciable only for high dislocation densities.