Primary defect production by high energy displacement cascades in molybdenum

We report molecular dynamics simulations of primary damage in molybdenum produced by high energy displacement cascades on the femto- to pico-second and Angstrom to nanometer scales. Clustering directly occurred for both interstitials and vacancies in the 1–50 keV cascade energy range explored. Point defect survival efficiency and partitioning probabilities into different sized clusters were quantified. The results will provide an important reference for kinetic models to describe the microstructural evolution in Mo under ion or neutron irradiations over much longer time and length scales.