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APL 102

Defects in Crystals – Line defects

Concepts: Dislocations, Edge dislocation, disl. line, Burger’s- vector & circuit

Lecture 16
 Recap
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Defects in crystalline solids
Real crystals will have imperfections or detects in them
External surface is an obvious defect
Presence of defects can alter the properties by few orders of magnitude

Vacancy Impurity

Non-ionic
0D crystals
Frenkel defect
(Point defects) Ionic
crystals

Schottky defect
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Question for thought?

How the free energy of the system varies when

vacancies are present in the crystal??
 G
0
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For minimum
n

H f  N n
 ln  Assuming n << N
kT  n 
n  H f 
Considering only configurational entropy  exp  
N  kT 
Use R instead of k if Hf is in J/mole

If there is vacancy concentration in crystal then this (n/N) is the

concentration that remains in thermodynamic equilibrium
 T (ºC) n/N
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500 1 x 1010

1000 1 x 105

1500 5 x 104

2000 3 x 103

Hf = 1 eV/vacancy
= 0.16 x 1018 J/vacancy

Certain equilibrium number of vacancies are preferred at T > 0K

Point defects are in thermodynamic equilibrium, they are there in real crystals
IIT Delhi CLASSIFICATION OF DEFECTS BASED ON DIMENSIONALITY

0D 1D 2D 3D
(Point defects) (Line defects) (Surface/Interface) (Volume defects)

Vacancy Dislocation Twins

Surface
Impurity Interphase Precipitate
boundary
Frenkel Faulted
Grain
defect region
boundary
Schottky Twin Voids /
defect boundary Cracks

Stacking
faults
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Line defect (1D): Dislocations

 Line defect
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Unlike vacancy, line defects do not remain in thermodynamic equilibrium

This implies that increase in enthalpy is not compensated by increase in

configurational entropy

We can reduce them by various ways, but we cannot get rid of them

Very important to understand them

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Question for thought?

Why it is important to know about line defects?

 Importance of line defects
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Plastic deformation of materials

Fracture

Creep

Fatigue

Crystal growth/Phase transformation

 Line Defects - Dislocations
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Straight line type defect Curvilinear line type defect
Edge Dislocation Screw Dislocation Mixed Dislocation

Dislocations are non-equilibrium defects and would leave the

crystal, if given an opportunity
 Some facts about Dislocation
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 Dislocations exist in almost all crystalline solids, typically

introduced during solidification or deformation.

 Dislocations form by mis-stacking of atoms. They create

lattice distortion around them. Atoms are rearranged as
the dislocation moves through the crystal.

 Typical alloys contain in the order of 100,000 km of dislocation lines per cubic cm.

 Dislocations facilitate deformation, and their creation and motion on crystal planes
causes yielding and permanent deformation.

 Dislocation play an important role in a variety of deformation processes (such as creep,

fatigue and fracture) of a crystal.
 Perfect crystal
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Defect arises when you have an incomplete

plane or part plane is missing
 Dislocation – Edge type
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Lattice defect is caused by introduction

of an extra half plane of atoms

Insertion of extra half plane has

perturbed the lattice
 Configuration of Edge Dislocation
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Cut bonds on plane ADEF Push the crystal towards right by one inter-planar spacing

D F
C

A B
E

1 2 3 4 5 6
1 2 3 4 5 6

ABCD is the slip plane AEFD (1 2 3) is slipped & EBCF (4 5 6) is un-slipped part of the crystal.

Line EF, the boundary or the edge of the slip plane, is the dislocation.
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Concept of dislocation
 In 1934 Taylor, Orowan and Polanyi postulated the presence of dislocations as a
mechanism of weakening of a crystal

Dislocation is a boundary
between the slipped and the
unslipped parts of the crystal
Slipped Unslipped lying over a slip plane
part part
of the of the
crystal crystal
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Question for thought?

What are the characteristics of such line defects or dislocations?

 Dislocation - Characteristics
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A dislocation has associated with it two vectors:


t  A unit tangent ve ctor along the dislocatio n line

b  The Burgers vector
  The intersection of the extra half-plane of atoms with
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the slip plane defines the dislocation line (for an edge
dislocation)
 Direction and magnitude of slip is characterized by the
Burgers vector of the dislocation
(A dislocation is born with a Burgers vector and
expresses it even in its death!)

Direction of tt vector
 dislocation line vector
tt vector
dislocation line vector


Direction of b
b vector
 Edge dislocation - Characteristics
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Stress field around dislocation

Compressive stress field at top

half of lattice

Tensile stress field at bottom

half of lattice
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Question for thought?

What is Burgers vector?

 Concept of Burgers vector
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 Direction and magnitude of slip is called Burgers vector of dislocation

 The Burgers vector is determined by the Burgers Circuit

 Burgers circuit is a circuitous path passing through the perfect parts of

the crystal such that net displacement is zero

 Burgers vector is the closure failure of the Burgers circuit

 Concept of Burgers vector
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Jan Burgers

The Burgers vector, named after Dutch physicist

Jan Burgers
 Edge dislocation – Burgers Vector
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Crystal with edge dislocation

Perfect crystal

RHFS
Right Hand Finish to Start
convention is used for determining
the direction of the Burgers vector
 Burgers circuit in perfect crystal
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Start and finish points same, Burgers circuit is closed

 Finish Start
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Q P
of dislocation

Closure failure is
the Burgers vector
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Burgers circuit is drawn using a right handed screw
(RHS) notation to avoid any ambiguity

For RHS direction of dislocation line needs to be

specified
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Dislocation line
E to F
or
F to E


t  A unit tangent vector along the dislocation line
RHS should be pointing in the direction of dislocation line
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 Will share your till date attendance and lab sheet marks in moodle