Imperfection /Defects

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 Structure -insensitive Properties
• Elastic constants
• Melting point
• Density
• Specific heat
• Coefficient of thermal expansion.

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 Structure-sensitive Properties

• Electrical conductivity
• Semiconductor Properties
• Yield stress
• Fracture Strength
• Creep strength
Practically all the mechanical properties
are structure-sensitive properties.
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 Defects in Crystalline Materials

• All real crystals contain imperfections

which may be point, line , surface or
volume defects.
• Which disturb locally the regular
arrangement of the atoms.
• Their presence can significantly modify the
properties of crystalline solids.
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 Defect, or imperfection
• The term defect, or imperfection, is
generally used to describe any deviation
from an orderly array of lattice points.
• When the deviation from the periodic
arrangement of the lattice is localized to
the vicinity of only a few atoms it is called
a point defect, or point imperfection.

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 Lattice Imperfection
• However if the defects extends through
microscopic region of the crystal, it is
called a lattice imperfection.
• Lattice imperfections may be divided into
Line defects and surface or Planer
defects.

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 Types of defects

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 Point Defects

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 Point Defects

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 Line Defect
• Line defects obtain their name because
they propagate as lines or as a two
dimensional net in the crystal. The edge
and Screw dislocations are the common
line defects encountered in materials.
• Surface defects arise from the clustering
of line defects into plane

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 Surface Defect

• The stacking fault between two closed

-packed regions of the crystal that have
alternate stacking sequences are other
example of surface defects.
• Grain boundaries, a low angle boundaries
and Twin boundaries are surface defects.

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 Point Defects

• All the atoms in a perfect lattice are at specific atomic

sites (ignoring thermal vibrations).
• In pure metal two types of point defect are possible, I)
Intrinsic defects ii) Extrinsic defects.
• Intrinsic defects: i) A vacant atomic site or vacancy,
ii) an interstitial atom.
• Vacancy formed by the removal of an atom from an
atomic site .
• Interstitial by the introduction of an atom into a non-
lattice site at 1/2, 1/2, 0 position.
•
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 Point Defects

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 Vacancy & Interstitial

• It is known that vacancies and interstitials

can be produced in materials by plastic
deformation and high- energy particle
irradiation.
• The latter process is particularly important
in materials in nuclear reactor installations.

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• The interstitial defect occurs in pure metals as a
result of bombardment with high-energy nuclear
particles ( radiation damage),
• It does not occur frequently as a result of
thermal activation.
• Further more, intrinsic point defects are
introduced into crystals simply by virtue of
temperature,
• For all temperature above 0K there is a
thermodynamically stable concentration.

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• The formation energy of interstitial is
typically two to four times more than the
formation energy of vacancy.
• Therefore in metals in thermal equilibrium
the concentration of intestinal may be
neglected in comparison with that of
vacancies

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 Extrinsic defects
• Extrinsic defects . Impurity atoms in a
crystal can be considered as a extrinsic
point defect. Impurity atoms can take up
two different types of sites.
• Substitutional. An atom of the parent
lattice lying in a lattice site is replaced by
the impurity atom
• Interstitial The impurity atom is at a non-
lattice site
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 Point Defects

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 Dislocation

• The most important two dimensional, or line,

defect is the dislocation.
• Dislocations are important for explaining the slip
of crystals,
• They are also intimately connected with nearly
all other mechanical phenomena such as ,
• yield point, strain hardening /work hardening,
creep, fatigue, and brittle fracture.

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• One way of thinking of a dislocation is to
consider that it is the region of localized
lattice disturbance separating the slipped
and un slipped region of a crystal.

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• The two basic types of dislocations :
• Edge dislocation , Burger vector is normal to the
line of the dislocation
• Two types Positive edge dislocation and
negative edge dislocation.
• Screw dislocation, burger vector is parallel to the
line of dislocation.
• Two types , Right hand screw and left hand
screw dislocation.

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• Two important rules.
• I) The burger vector of edge dislocation is
normal to the line of the dislocation .
• II) The burger vector of screw dislocation
is parallel to the line of the dislocation .
• All crystals, apart from some whiskers,
contain dislocations and in well annealed
crystals the dislocation are arranged in a
rather ill- defined net work, the frank net.
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 Dislocation Density
• The dislocation density is defined as the total
length of dislocation line per unit volume of
crystal, normally quoted in units of mm-2.
• Thus for a volume V containing line length l,
Density = l/V.
• An alternative definition, the number of
dislocations intersecting a unit area, again
measured in units of mm-2 .
• If all the dislocations are parallel, the two density
values are the same, but for completely random
arrangement the volume density is twice the
surface density.
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 Stacking Faults

• A stacking fault is a planer defects ,

• it is a local region in the crystal where the regular
sequence has been interrupted.
• The atomic arrangement on the plane of an fcc structure
and the plane of an hcp structure could be obtained by
the stacking of closed- packed planes of spheres.
• For the fcc structure, the stacking sequence of the
planes of atom is given by ABCABCABC.
• For the hcp structure, the sequence is given by
ABABAB and there is no alternate site for an A layer
resting on B layer.
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• For the hcp structure, the sequence is given by
ABABAB and there is no alternate site for an A
layer resting on B layer.
• In case of ABCABCABC stacking, A layer can
rest equally well on either B or C position and
geometrically there is no reason for the selection
of a particular position.
• Therefore in fcc lattice two types of stacking
fault are possible. Either by removal or
introduction of stacking sequence.

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• i) Intrinsic stacking fault part of the layer
has been removed which results in a
break of the stacking sequence.
• ii) Extrinsic stacking fault. An extra layer
has been introduced between B and C
layer. There are two breaks in the stacking
sequence.
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