DEFECTS IN CRYSTALS

UNIT 2
 DEFECTS IN CRYSTALS
• All materials however pure will have defects
especially vacancies.
• There are three main categories of defects in
crystals defined by size and dimensions
• a) Point Defects
– Can be a vacancy site with one atom missing or
– an interstitial atom not occupying its normal position
or
•
 POINT DEFECTS IN CRYSTALS
• Substitutional impurities.
–These are impurities that substitute
themselves for one of the host atoms
in the lattice or
• Interstitial impurities.
–These are impurities that are
squeezed at points other than normal
lattice points.
 DEFECTS IN CRYSTALS
b) Line defects
• These are one dimensional or lines of
imperfections in a material. They are known as
dislocations
c) Sheet/ surface or plane defects
• Examples of these are stacking faults, grain
boundaries, interphase boundaries
d) Volume Defects
these could be cavities in a material (voids or
bubbles)
• or even Precipitates
 DISLOCATIONS
• Dislocation geometry - A dislocation is a line
defects that separates a region of a crystal
that has slipped from a region that has not
• Between the slipped and unslipped regions,
the structure will be dislocated; this boundary
is referred to as a dislocation line, or
dislocation
• Dislocations affects electrical, chemical and in
particular mechanical properties
 DISLOCATION
• It is a line of discontinuity,
• it forms a closed loop in the interior of
the crystal or emerges at the surface
and
• the difference in the amount of slip
across the dislocation line is constant.
 BURGER’S VECTOR
• a dislocation is characterized by the magnitude and
direction of the slip movement associated with it.
• This is called the Burgers vector, b, which for any
given dislocation line is the same all along its
length.
• In a crystal, the burger’s vector b is usually the
shortest lattice translation vector.
• Perfect dislocations are translation vectors.
• It is possible that b may not be a lattice translation
vector in other words may not join two lattice sites.
What results is an imperfect dislocation or a partial
dislocation.
• Typically the magnitude of a burgers vector is of the
order of a few Å (0.2-0.4 nm).
 DISLOCATIONS
• There are two basic types of dislocations.
These are the edge and the screw dislocations
• Edge dislocations
– The burgers vector is perpendicular to the
dislocation line in an edge dislocation.
• an example of a positive edge dislocation which is
designated by symbol .
• The perpendicular line represents the extra half
plane, while the horizontal line represents the
direction of the slip plane.
• A negative edge dislocation has the opposite sign
and the extra half plane is below the slip plane.
• Positive and negative edge dislocations are physically
opposite dislocations and combining them results in
a perfect crystal.
 SCREW DISLOCATION
• In the screw dislocation the Burgers vector is
parallel to the dislocation line.
• After slip has taken place, the perpendicular
planes which were parallel before the
dislocation form a helicoidal surface i.e a
screw thread with a pitch of the magnitude of
a burgers vector.
• A screw dislocation can be left handed or right
handed.
• Left and right handed screws are equal and
opposite.
SCREW DISLOCATION
 MIXED DISLOCATIONS

In the figure above, the dislocation loop is pure screw at point A and pure edge at
point B, while along most of its length it has mixed edge and screw components.

A dislocation line is rarely pure edge or pure screw

Any dislocation can be resolved into edge and screw components.
 BURGER’S CIRCUIT
• start at a lattice point and imagine a clockwise
path traced from atom to atom an equal
distance in each direction
• At the finish of the path the circuit does not
close.
• The closure failure from finish to start is the
Burgers vector b of the dislocation
BURGER’S CIRCUIT
 DEFORMATION BY SLIP
• The usual method of plastic deformation in
metals is by the sliding of blocks of crystals over
one another along definite crystallographic
planes called slip planes.
• Slip is the process by which metals deform
plastically
• During slip the atoms move an integral number of
atomic distances along the slip plane.
• the crystal structure is perfectly restored after slip
has taken place provided that the deformation
was uniform.
• Each atom in the slipped part moves forward the
same integral number of lattice spacings.
 DEFORMATION BY SLIP
• Slip occurs more readily in specific directions on
certain crystallographic planes.
• Generally the slip plane is the plane of the
greatest atomic density and
• the slip direction is the closest-packed direction
within the slip plane.
• Since the planes of greatest atomic density are
also the most widely spaced planes in the crystal
structure, the resistance to slip is generally less
for these planes than for any other set of
planes.
 SLIP SYSTEMS
• The slip plane together with the slip direction
establishes the slip system.

The limited number of slip systems in HCP is the reason for

the extreme orientation dependence and low ductility of HCP
crystals.
BCC materials have no definite single slip plane. It has three
planes and one closest packed direction
Since planes are not as close packed as FCC, higher shearing
stresses are required to cause slip in BCC
 SLIP SYSTEMS
• Example: Determine the slip systems for slip on the (111) in the
FCC crystal structure and sketch the result.

• The slip directions in the FCC are the <110> type directions. Slip
directions are most easily established from a sketch of the
(111) plane.
• To prove that these slip directions lie in the plane, a dot
product between the plane and the direction should result in a
value of zero.
 SLIP IN A PERFECT LATTICE
• If slip is assumed to occur by the translation of one
plane of atoms over another, it is possible to make a
reasonable estimate of the shear stress required for
such a movement in a perfect lattice.
• Consider two planes of atoms subjected to a
homogeneous shear stress.
• The shear stress is assumed to act in the slip plane
along the slip direction.
• The distance between atoms in the slip direction is b
• the spacing between adjacent planes is a.
• The shear stress causes a displacement x in the slip
direction between the pair of adjacent lattice planes.
 SLIP IN A PERFECT LATTICE
• The shearing stress is initially zero when the two
planes are coincident,
• and it is also zero when the atoms of the top plane
is over point 2 on the bottom plane.
• The shearing stress is also zero when the atoms of
the top plane are midway between those of the
bottom plane, since this is a symmetry position.
• Between these positions each atom is attracted to
wards the nearest atom of the other row,
• so that the shearing stress is a periodic function of
the dislacement.
SLIP IN A PERFECT LATTICE
 SLIP IN A PERFECT LATTICE
• The shear modulus for metals is in the range 20 to
150 GPa.
• therefore equations (3-5) predicts that the
theoretical shear stress will be in the range (3 to 30)
GPa)
• actual values of shear stress required to produce
plastic deformation in metal single crystals are in the
range 0.5 MPa to 10 MPa.
• Since the shear strength of metal crystals is
approximately 100 times greater than the observed
shear strength, it must be concluded that a
mechanism other than bodily shearing of planes of
atoms is responsible for slip.
 SLIP BY DISLOCATION MOVEMENT
• The concept of the dislocation was first
introduced to explain the discrepancy between
the observed and the theoretical shear strength
of metals.
• For the dislocation concept to be valid, it is
necessary to show the following
– that the motion of a dislocation through a crystal
lattice requires a stress far smaller than the
theoretical shear stress
– that the movement of the dislocations produces a
step, or a slip band at the free surface.
 SLIP BY DISLOCATION MOVEMENT
• In a perfect lattice atoms above and below the
slip plane are in minimum energy positions
• When a shear stress is applied to a crystal, the
same force opposing the movement acts on all
the atoms.
• When there is a dislocation in the crystal the
atoms well away from the dislocation are still in
the minimum energy positions but at a
dislocation only a small movement of atoms is
required.
SLIP BY DISLOCATION MOTION
• In figure (a) the extra plane of atoms at the edge dislocation
initially is at 4.
• Under the action of the shear stress, a very small movement of
atoms to the right will allow this half plane to line up with the
half plane 5’, at the same time cutting the half plane 5 from its
neighbours below the slip plane.
• the edge dislocation line has moved from its initial position
between planes 4’ and 5’ to a new position between planes 5’
and 6’
• Since the atoms around the dislocations are symmetrically
placed on opposite sides of the extra half plane, equal and
opposite forces oppose and assist the motion.
• To a first approximation there is no net force on the dislocation
and the stress required to move the dislocation is zero
. The continuation of this process under the stresses moves the
dislocation to the right.
When the extra half plane of atoms reaches a free surface figure
(b) it results in a slip step of one Burger’s vector, or one atomic
distance for the simple cubic lattice.