Recovery of irradiated and quenched metals

A review of the present state of understanding of the defect reactions occurring during the annealing of irradiated metals is given. These reactions are presently understood best for recovery stage 1. In this stage-aside from close pair recovery-freely migrating interstitials react with vacancies, other interstitials and impurity traps. Stage II annealing involves primarily the rearrangement of the interstitial clusters nucleated in stage I. Growth of larger clusters is obtained at the expense of smaller ones. In addition, in samples where extensive trapping of interstitials at impurities has occurred in stage I, detrapping of the interstitials from these impurities is observed in stage II. For a number of metals there is now clear evidence that single vacancies become mobile in stage III and annihilate at the interstitial clusters remaining from lower temperatures.