Indian J Phys (March 2017) 91(3):293–298

DOI 10.1007/s12648-016-0915-9

ORIGINAL PAPER

Gamma radiation induced resistivity changes in Iron

A Tundwal, V Kumar* and A Datta
University School of Basic and Applied Sciences, G.G.S. Indraprastha University, New Delhi, India

Received: 26 November 2015 / Accepted: 26 July 2016 / Published online: 12 September 2016

Abstract: Monte Carlo Code JA-IPU is used for estimation of Frenkel pairs and their effect on change of resistivity of Iron
on irradiation by gamma spectrum of Co60. The Code includes three cascade processes of incident gamma, produced
electrons and recoiled atoms and simulation of the lattice structure of the target material. Change in experimentally
measured resistivity of Iron is found to vary with number of Frenkel pairs as *(x - 1) ln Nd.

Keywords: Radiation damage; Monte Carlo simulation; Frenkel pairs; Gamma irradiation; Resistivity

PACS Nos.: 61.80.Ed

1. Introduction
In recent years, study of radiation damage of materials has
been revisited because of the expected high rate of radia-
tion damage in fusion reactors, accelerator driven sub
critical systems and damage of control system of space
vehicles by the high energy neutrons and gamma showers.
Embrittlement of reactor vessels [1, 2], corrosion of steel
and swelling of fuel rods [3] are the well known empirical
evidences of severe radiation damage.
Along with them, it is also realized that damage by high
energy gamma alone is significant [4]. On the other hand,
value addition of certain materials like enhancement of
electrical resistivity of metals, mechanical strength on
irradiation by neutrons and gammas and polymerization in
the presence of gamma radiation add to the necessity of
developing a Monte Carlo (MC) code exclusively for the
study of radiation damage. The JA-IPU code, originally
developed for the study of radiation damage by neutrons up
to *10 MeV energy [5, 6] has been extended to the
gamma irradiation on incorporating lattice structure of
target materials and atomic radii to find out site specific
damage. Its basic details have been presented in references
[7, 8] and here it is shortly described in Section 3. The code
uses MC simulation of three kinds of cascades of incident
photons, produced electrons and the recoiled atoms and it
is different to several other approaches [9, 10] that are
*Corresponding author, E-mail: vkverma274@gmail.com
based on the NRT model [11] where the energy of primary
knocked out atom, PKA is simulated and used to calculate
the number of Frenkel pairs from an empirical parameter-
ization. In these approaches one loses information like
spatial distribution, size of atomic cascade and creation of
free volume that have strong bearing on the physical
behavior of the material after irradiation. In this paper,
change of resistivity [12] on irradiation of pure Iron sample
by a gamma spectrum of Co60 has been investigated with a
global perspective [3, 13, 14] to find out a physical quantity
different to DPA which does not depend on the incident
radiation spectrum alone [15, 16] and that can also be
correlated with swelling and the mechanical strength as
well. Iron is chosen for irradiation because it is a major
component of all kinds of steels, reactor vessel walls and
used in shower calorimeters and particle detectors.
2. Irradiation of samples and resistivity measurement
Iron foils (99.5 % pure) procured from Strem chemicals
were irradiated to five different doses of the direct gamma
spectrum of Co60 source of original strength 4775 Ci
available at IUAC, New Delhi. At the time of irradiation
dose rate was 5.538 kGy/hr. Details of sample size and
irradiation are given in the following Table 1. Resistance
of both pristine and irradiated samples were known from
the slope of I-V plots drawn using 2182A nanovoltmeter
and 6221 Keitheley’s current source. The effect of ther-
moelectric voltage has been eliminated using delta current
reversal technique included in 6221/2182A combination. A

Ó 2016 IACS
294 A Tundwal et al.

Table 1 Details of imparted, absorbed and MC simulated doses of five Iron foils at 300 K
Sr. no. Sample size (cm3) Irradiation time (s) Imparted dose (Gy) Absorbed dose (Gy) Simulated dose (Gy)

1 1.05 9 0.5 9 0.039 13 20 0.003224 0.003218

2 1.10 9 0.8 9 0.039 32.3 50 0.013512 0.013482
3 1.05 9 0.6 9 0.039 65.1 100 0.019346 0.019333
4 0.8 9 0.63 9 0.039 975.1 1500 0.232157 0.231674
5 0.8 9 0.65 9 0.039 1300.12 2000 0.319369 0.318702

Table 2 Simulated value of the number of Frenkel pairs, Nd, deduced parameter, x, measured electrical resistance, R(X), resistivity, q (X-m),
normalized resistivity, q=q0
Sr. no. Nd ln Nd x (x - 1) ln Nd R (X) ±DR(X) Resistivity
q (X-m) q=q0

1 1.41E?09 21.06635 1.0001 0.001218 5.23E-04 2.46E-06 9.72E-08 1

2 5.90E?09 22.49905 1.001 0.022408 3.50E-04 2.93E-06 9.93E-08 1.02
3 7.66E?09 22.75945 1.0016 0.035914 4.51E-04 9.19E-06 1.01E-07 1.04
4 1.01E?11 25.343 1.0109 0.277185 4.04E-04 2.40E-06 1.24E-07 1.28
5 1.40E?11 25.66193 1.0134 0.345864 4.12E-04 1.05E-05 1.31E-07 1.35

proper shielding has been used to remove external noise
sources. The errors in measured resistance varies from
*0.5 to 2.5 % and errors are shown in column 7 of
Table 2. In calculation of resistivity, it is assumed that no
error is committed in measurement of cross-sectional area
and length of the sample. Measured resisitivity of pristine
sample being *9.72 9 10-8 X-m shows that the mea-
surements are highly reliable.
3. JA-IPU Code and Monte Carlo simulation-scheme
First of all, a unit cell of BCC lattice with lattice constant
a = 2.8665 Å is generated and in order to get positions of all
atoms of a pristine sample, unit cells are multiplied to obtain the
dimensions of the given sample. This helps in management of
the computer memory and for estimation of the size of clusters
of interstitials or vacancies. To ascertain whether a gamma
interacts with a valence or a core electron, cutoff radii of dif-
ferent shells have also been included in the code using the data
given in Ref. [17]. For simulation of interactions, atomic
positions are considered as frozen. Details of the MC simula-
tion scheme and data library used in simulation have been
discussed in Ref. [7]. For simulation, histories of incident
photons (varying between 105 to 108) corresponding to Co60
gamma spectrum are generated to establish a relationship
between the incident number of photons and the simulated
physical quantity such as (i) number of electrons produced in
three elementary interactions, i.e. photo electric, Compton and
pair production (ii) number of Frenkel pairs produced in elec-
tron ? atom and atom ? atom collisions and (iii) amount of
the dose given to the sample. Reasons of generating limited
histories in case of gamma irradiation is the fact that a big part
of computer memory is occupied by the lattice simulation and
the storage. After the photon ? electron interaction a produced
electron is followed till it stops or escapes out of the sample and
to account for the loss of its kinetic energy in ionization and
displacement of lattice atoms. Total number of Frenkel pairs
due to both electronic and atomic cascades, Nd and the damage
energy, Tdam are treated as the two basic quantities known from
the Monte Carlo simulation for establishing correlations with a
measurable quantity like resistivity. The damage energy, Tdam
is equal to the kinetic enrgy of ‘Primary knock out atom (PKA)’
minus the ionisation loss [8]. One of the important feature of the
JA-IPU code is that Tdam is defined after accounting for the loss
of kinetic energy in (i) ionization of the medium and (ii) energy
taken away by the particle in escaping out of the sample. This
becomes different to several earlier approaches [9–11] because
they count entire kinetic energy of PKA as the energy used in
damage of the medium. It may be pointed out that large dif-
ference in calculation of Tdam arises in case of a thin sample due
to escape out and in case of thick sample because of develop-
ment of the atomic cascade where ionization losses are high due
to charge of moving nucleus.
4. Results
4.1. Absorbed dose
Absorbed dose in a sample due to I0 incident photon flu-
ence is calculated following the following relation [18] and
the data of absorption coefficients taken from Ref. [19],
Gamma radiation induced resistivity changes in Iron 295

I c Ec l a required for a electron to produce a displacement is

D ¼ D_  t ¼ 1:6  1013   t Gy
q 0.629 MeV. If the range of kinetic energy distribution of
displaced atom, PKA is found to be in between Ed and 2Ed,
where Ic ¼ I0  I is the fluence of absorbed photons (ph/ shows that a PKA can not further displace a secondary
(m2 s)), Ec is incident photon energy (MeV), la is the atom to develop an atomic cascade. This favours existence
photon absorption coefficient (m-1), q is the density of of monovacacies, created by electron ? atom collision
material (kg/m3) and t is the exposure time (s). Absorbed only. If kinetic energy of a knocked on atom is less than Ed
dose has also been calculated by MC simulation using the then it is counted towards the excitation energy of the
following formulation, atom. In Fig. 2, results of MC simulation for the number of
E displaced atoms per incident gamma, Nd /photon have been
D ¼ lim shown as function of damage energy, Tdam/photon and it is
m!0 m
a straight line relation with slope, k = 23,410 ± 400/MeV.
where, m is the mass of the sample in kg and energy
In our earlier study [5] similar linear relationship has been
imparted to the sample for the stochastic process of gamma
obtained in the case of irradiation of Ni and Nb metals by a
interactions with matter is given by,
X X X neutron spectra. Thus, the common linear behavior has
E¼ Ec;in  Eout þ Q been utilized to estimate various physical behavior such as
P change of resistivity of the irradiated sample.
Here, Ec;in is the sum of kinetic energies of incident
P
gamma photons P and Eout is the sum of energies escaping
out the sample, Q is the sum of all changes in rest mass 5. Discussion
energies of target entities i.e. nuclei and elementary parti-
cles in any transformation occurred in the sample. For Co60 In case of metals, change of resistivity may also occur due
gamma spectrum, energy converted into rest mass and to creation of the Frankel pairs. According to Broeders and
brehmsstruhlung radiation is considered to be negligible Konobeyev [13] the higher the number of Frenkel pairs or
for the purpose of dose calculation. The relationship damage energy cross section (rTdam) the higher will be the
between the absorbed dose and the simulated dose is pre- resistivity, so long as the size of the cluster of interstitials
sented in Fig. 1 for the five exposure doses. Slope of the or the voids is small. Here, r is the damage cross sec-
fitted line being 1.000 ± 0.003 shows that the simulated tion. In a recent study of radiation damage [15, 16] (see
dose agrees well with the absorbed dose calculated from ‘‘Appendix’’) a correlation between resistivity, q and the
the standard relation [18]. number of Frenkel pairs, Nd has been derived based on the
linear relationship between Nd and Tdam given in Fig. 2,
4.2. Displacements q= ¼ 1 þ ðx  1Þ ln Nd
q0 ð1Þ
In an electron ? atom collision, an atom is said to be where q0 is the resistivity of the pristine sample at room
displaced if it gets kinetic energy C Ed (threshold energy temperature and parameter ‘x’ corresponds to a high degree
being 40 eV for Fe). In case of Iron, minimum energy of disorder caused by irradiation and has been discussed in
0.4
-5
1.0x10

-6
9.6x10
0.3
Simulated dose (Gy)

-6
8.8x10
Nd / ph

0.2 -6
8.0x10 Y=A+B*X

Parameter Value Error

Y=A+B*X -6 ------------------------------------------------------------
7.2x10 A -1.261E-7 1.101E-7
0.1 Parameter Value Error B 23413.873 354.144
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------
A -5.659E-4 4.456E-4 -6
B 1.000 0.003 6.4x10 R SD N P
------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------
1 4.909E-8 7 <0.0001
R SD N P ------------------------------------------------------------
0.0 ------------------------------------------------------------
-6
1 7.648E-4 6 <0.0001
5.6x10
------------------------------------------------------------ -10 -10 -10 -10 -10
2.5x10 3.0x10 3.5x10 4.0x10 4.5x10
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 Tdam / ph (MeV)
Absorbed dose (Gy)
Fig. 2 Number of Frenkel pairs, Nd as a function of damage energy,
Fig. 1 Absorbed dose versus MC simulated dose relationship Tdam per photons at different doses of Co60
296
the appendix where derivation of relation (1) has also been
given. For a highly disordered state experimental data of
resistivity (qD ) is not available for all materials and in this
situation qD is assumed to be equal to xq0 . For pure Iron
(99.99 %), q0 = 9.71E - 8 (X-m). Corresponding to an
irradiation dose one can compute Nd by MC simulation and
using the measured value of resistivity one can calculate
value of the parameter, x from the relation (1). The detailed
data of Monte Carlo simulation corresponding to 5 doses
and experimentally measured resistivity are given in
Table 2. So deduced values of parameter x given in column
4 show that x increases slowly with the dose and the
maximum change in parameter, x is *1.3 % at the maxi-
mum dose compared to the variation of Nd which is *100
times.
In Fig. 3 experimentally measured resistivity, q has
been plotted as a function of Nd using the data given in
Table 2. Both linear and exponential curves are fitted to the
data. It may be seen from the R2 values that both the curves
are reasonably fitted to the data. This is mathematically
contradictory. A mathematical derivation of resistivity is
given in the appendix and final relation (13) favours
resistivity to vary as *Z ln Nd where Z = (x - 1) q0
where x is identified as a perspective parameter and in the
present case x - 1 assumes small variations with dose
compared to very high value of Nd. In fact, more experi-
mental observations will be required to understand the
parameter, x. Secondly, in context of change of resisitivity
on irradiation it may also be pointed out that in an approach
given in Ref. [13] average damage energy cross sec-
tion, hrTdami has been correlated with the change in
resistivity in case of neutron irradiation of metals on get-
ting atom ? atom collision cross sections [20] but in the
present case of irradiation by gamma such relationship
between hrTdami and resistivity could not be established
mainly due to the limited number of generated histories
1.4x10
-7
-7 Data
1.3x10
2
Linear fit ( R = 0.997)
-7 2
1.3x10 Exp. fit ( R = 0.994)
Resistivity (Ω-m)
-7
1.2x10
1.1x10
-7
-7
1.0x10
9.8x10
-8
-8
9.1x10
10
0.0 5.0x10
Fig. 3 Measured resistivity plotted as a function of Nd with linear
and exponential fits
A Tundwal et al.
(*108) and the computer memory. In fact, when the code
is run for gamma irradiation compared to irradiation by
neutrons a large part of the memory is occupied by the
simulation of lattice and calculations related to the cascade
of incident gamma. In case of neutron irradiation nearly
1010–1011 histories can be generated on a PC and they are
numerically matching the incident neutron flux. In this
situation, only a correlation between resistivity, q with Nd
has been attempted.
Enhancement of resistivity of metals on irradiation by
reactor neutrons has been noticed long back [21] but the
modeling of radiation damage by gamma has been
attempted only recently. Although, Kadry et al. [22] have
observed enhancement of resistivity of lanthanides on
irradiation by gammas and correlated the resistivity with
the gamma dose and activation energy without simulation
of these quantities. After nearly two decades in one such
attempt metal wires of Cu and W are irradiated to proton
beams and enhancement of resistivity is correlated [23]
with the proton fluence as well as the number of Frenkel
pairs calculated using the MC simulation of kinetic energy
of recoiled nuclei applying the NRT model [11]. In another
attempt [24] using an MC approach it has been inferred that
variation of the electrical resistivity with dose is different
in case of the two gamma spectra of Co57 and Co60 sources.
These observations can also be exploited further to estab-
lish spectrum dependence of parameters k and x of present
approach.
6. Conclusions
In the present work, experimentally measured electrical
resistivity, q of Iron as given in Table 2, has been shown to
vary with Nd. It is also pointed out that in case of the given
gamma doses contribution of atomic cascade in production
of Frenkel pairs is negligibly small therefore, all displaced
atoms, Nd may be considered due to single atomic dis-
placements in the electron ? atom collisions.
From this study following conclusion can be drawn,
1. For the given range of absorbed gamma dose, resis-
tivity of Iron changes up to 35 %. Consequently, this is
useful to understand a relation between change in
resistivity and swelling of Iron [25] on irradiation by
gamma. In the absence of availability of experimental
data on swelling more work on Monte Carlo simula-
tion of free volume is required.
11 11 11
1.0x10 1.5x10 2.0x10 2. JA-IPU code has been successfully used to simulate
Nd
radiation damage of Iron by gamma spectrum of Co60
and to infer that resistivity of Iron changes linearly
with the (x - 1) ln Nd.
Gamma radiation induced resistivity changes in Iron 297

Acknowledgments One of the authors A Tundwal is thankful to 1.40

GGSIP University for providing Indraprastha research fellowship and Irradiated
1.35 Linear fit
IUAC for providing the irradiation facility.
1.30

1.25
Appendix
1.20
Y=A+B*X
Based on the linear relationship between Nd and Tdam given 1.15
Parameter Value Error
in Fig. 2 a phenomenological approach based on the con- 1.10 ------------------------------------------------------------
A 0.100 0.0017
B 1.012 0.0084
tribution of Frenkel pairs towards resistivity is developed 1.05 ------------------------------------------------------------

as follows, R SD N P
------------------------------------------------------------
1.00 1 0.0027 5 <0.0001
dNd / dTdam ð2Þ ------------------------------------------------------------

0.95
dNd ¼ kdTdam -0.05 0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30 0.35 0.40
(x-1) ln Nd
Constant, k depends on the spectrum of incident particle.
On integration we can obtain total number of Frenkel pairs, Fig. 4 Measured normalized resistivity plotted as a function of
Nd (x - 1) ln Nd
Z Tdam corresponds to q ¼ q0 and dV = V corresponds to qD ¼ q.
r dNd ¼ k dTdam ð3Þ In that sense higher values of x may lead to more inter-
Ed
esting results. Thus, relation (9) can be written as,
Nd ¼ kðTdam  Ed Þ ð4Þ
dq dV
Nd
Tdam Ed  ¼ ð10Þ
n ¼ k n  n can be used for calculations per incident ðxq0  q0 Þ V
particle.The density of displaced atoms may be written as,
Putting expression for dV V from the Eq. (8), change in
Nd ðTdam  Ed Þ resistivity can be approximated by the following relation,
nd ¼ ¼k ð5Þ
V V  
k
Nd dq ¼ ðxq0  q0 Þ dTdam
V¼ ð6Þ Nd
nd  
k
Assuming nd is roughly constant, disordered volume may dq ¼ q0 ðx  1Þ dTdam ð11Þ
Nd
be written as,
  where both ‘k’ and ‘x’ are spectrum dependent. Thus, there
1
dV ¼ dNd is a composite independent variable, dTNdam on which the
nd resistivity depends linearly.
d

From the Eq. (6), In case of one irradiation spectrum like Co60 gamma
spectrum, k ¼ dTdNdam
d
, Therefore, the Eq. (11) can be written
dV dNd
¼ ð7Þ as,
V Nd
ðq  q0 Þ ¼ q0 ðx  1Þ ln Nd ð12Þ
Therefore, using Eq. (2) one can write
or there is a linear relation between q and ln Nd ,
dV k
¼ dTdam ð8Þ q ¼ q0 þ Z ln Nd ð13Þ
V Nd
In an explanation of resistivity, Brinkman [26] has related it where Z ¼ ðx  1Þq0 . Taking data from Table 2 in the
to the disordered volume. Following this, we can write that, following Fig. 4 normalized resistivity, q=q0 has been
plotted as a function of (x - 1) ln Nd and it can be seen that
q  q0 dV
¼ ð9Þ the normalized resistivity increases linearly with (x - 1) ln
qD  q0 V Nd.
where q0 and qD correspond to the resistivity of pristine
and highly disordered state of a sample respectively.
In the situation of non-availability of data of resistivity,
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