Molecular dynamics simulation of displacement cascades in zircon

Molecular dynamics simulation with Buckingham and Morse empirical potentials has been used to study radiation damage in zircon (ZrSiO4) at 300 K, where a uranium atom was used as the primary knock-on atom with a kinetic energy of 1 keV. The dependence of number of displaced Zr, Si and O atoms versus simulation time and Si-O and O-O RDF functions have been drawn. The results of the MD simulations show that the maximal number of displaced atoms is closely equal to 100 for t approximate to 0.27 ps, and the end number of displaced atoms is closely equal to 70 for t > 1 ps.