Beyond DPA: An Atomistic Framework for a Quantitative Description of Radiation Damage in YBa₂Cu₃O₇

Radiation damage in high-temperature cuprate superconductors represents one of the main technological challenges for their deployment in harsh environments, such as fusion reactors and accelerator facilities.Their complex crystal structure makes modeling irradiation effects in this class of materials a particularly demanding task, for which existing damage models remain inadequate.In this work, we develop an atomistic-based approach for describing primary radiation damage in YBa₂Cu₃O₇, by coupling molecular dynamics and binary collision approximation simulations in a way that makes them complementary. When integrated with primary knock-on atom spectra obtained from Monte Carlo codes, our results establish a framework for multiscale modeling of radiation damage, enabling quantitative estimates of several damage descriptors, such as defect production, defect clustering, and the effective damaged volume for any specific irradiation conditions where collision cascades dominate. This computational approach is suitable for the prediction of irradiation effects in any complex functional oxide, with applications ranging from aerospace to nuclear fusion and high-energy physics.