Difference approach to the analysis of resistivity recovery data for irradiated short-range ordered alloys

Electrical resistivity recovery (RR) data for irradiated concentrated alloys typically consist of two inseparable parts, one resulting from defect annihilation and the other from short-range order (SRO) effects. These parts exhibit different behaviour and often follow opposite trends. Therefore, in this case, analysis of RR data within the conventional method is too complicated. A new approach to data analysis of such a two-component RR is proposed. The approach involves a new quantity, the difference RR (DRR), which is composed of RR dependences of two similar samples irradiated to different defect concentrations. It is shown that the SRO formation proper and the stages corresponding to the onset of long-range migration of Frenkel pair defects, formed in each part of RR, can be clearly related to certain features of the DRR plots. This interrelationship allows detecting and identifying these stages in each part of RR separately. The validity of the approach is illustrated by analysis of the available pairwise RR data for Fe–16Cr–20Ni and Fe–4Cr alloys. It makes it possible to detect the small contribution from the SRO formation to RR in Fe–4Cr, which we failed to observe previously. It is shown that stage III of Fe–4Cr, which has a negligible contribution to the part of RR induced by defect annihilation, is clearly observed in the part induced by SRO formation.