Tri Dasa Mega Vol. 24 No. 3 (2022) 131-136 Jurnal Teknologi Reaktor Nuklir Tri Dasa Mega Journal homepage: jurnal.batan.go.id/index.php/tridam Collision Cascade and Primary Radiation Damage in Silicon Carbide: A Molecular Dynamics Study Ihda Husnayani 1* , Muzakkiy Putra Muhammad Akhir 2 1 Research Center for Nuclear Reactor Technology, National Research and Innovation Agency, Kawasan Puspitek Gedung 80, Tangerang Selatan, Banten, Indonesia 2 Research Center for Quantum Physics, National Research and Innovation Agency, Kawasan Puspitek Gedung 440, Tangerang Selatan, Banten, Indonesia ARTICLE INFO A B S T R A C T Article history: Received: 21 September 2022 Received in revised form: 17 October 2022 Accepted: 17 October 2022 Silicon carbide (SiC) is a competitive candidate material to be used in several advanced and Generation-IV nuclear reactor designs as a neutron moderator, fuel coating, cladding, or core structural material. Many studies have been performed to investigate the durability of SiC in a severe environment in a nuclear reactor. However, the nature and behavior of defects induced by neutron irradiation are still not fully understood. This paper is aimed to study collision cascade and primary radiation damage in SiC using molecular dynamics simulation. The potential being used was a hybrid Tersoff potential modified with Ziegler- Biersack-Littmark (ZBL) screening function. The collision cascade was let evolved for 10 ps from a Si or C primary knocked atom (PKA) located initially at the top center of a system containing 960.000 atoms. The simulation was carried out at room temperature as well as at several advanced fission reactor-relevant temperatures. It was obtained that the number of C point defects was larger than the number of Si point defects. The number of stable point defect was found to be temperature- dependent. It was also obtained that the recovery of point defects was larger at high temperature (>800°C). This recovery behavior shows that SiC is suitable to be used at high temperature condition. Keywords: Silicon carbide Collision cascade Radiation damage Molecular dynamics Neutron irradiation © 2022 Tri Dasa Mega. All rights reserved. 1. INTRODUCTION  Silicon carbide (SiC), although it has been used in nuclear reactor application since 60 years ago as a coating material of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR) fuel, is still a competitive material to be used in advanced reactor designs currently being developed [1–3]. Besides its use in HTGR, SiC coated fuel particles are also used in pebble-bed molten salt reactor (PB-MSR) design [4]. SiC is also  Corresponding author E-mail: ihda001@brin.go.id DOI: 10.17146/tdm.2022.24.3.6702 a strong candidate material for accident tolerant fuel (ATF) cladding in light water reactor-based small modular reactor (SMR) [5, 6]. Moreover, SiC is currently proposed to be used as coating for graphite in MSR to protect graphite from salt infiltration [7, 8]. The properties of SiC which make it desirable for use in nuclear reactors are its excellent mechanical strength in high-temperature, radiation and oxidation resistance. However, it is known that properties modification of SiC might occur due to neutron JURNAL TEKNOLOGI REAKTOR NUKLIR TRI DASA MEGA http://jurnal.batan.go.id/index.php/tridam JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR REACTOR TECHNOLOGY TRI DASA MEGA