Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

◼ Crystal defects

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Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

◼ Point defects
▪ Point Defect involves a single atom change to the normal crystal array
▪ Three major types: Vacancies, Interstitials and Impurities
▪ May be built-in with the original crystal growth, or activated by heat
▪ Result of radiation, or electric current etc.

Vacancies

▪ A Vacancy is the absence of an atom from a site normally occupied in the lattice
▪ A pair of cation and anion missing from an ionic crystal resulting in a pair of vacant ion sites is
called Schottky imperfection

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Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

Interstitials

▪ An Interstitial is an atom on a non-lattice site

▪ There needs to be enough room for it, so this type of defect occurs in open covalent structures,
or metallic structures with large atoms
▪ Frenkel defect: an atom/ ion has been displaced into an interstitial site

Compositional defects
▪ An Impurity is the substitution of a regular lattice atom with an atom that does not normally
occupy that site
➢ Interstitial Impurity
➢ Substitutional impurity: An Interstitial impurity refers to small sized

A Substitutional impurity refers to a foreign atom atom occupying the void space in the

that has replaced a parent atom parent crystal without replacing the parent

atoms
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Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

Compositional defects conti.

Electronic defects
▪ Errors in charge distribution in solids are called electronic defects
▪ Produced when the composition of an ionic crystal does not correspond to the exact
stoichiometric formula

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Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

Dislocation
▪ Dislocation is a line discontinuity in the regular crystal structure
▪ Two types: Edge dislocations, and Screw dislocations

Edge dislocation: Metal may be regarded as

the insertion (or removal) of an extra half plane
of atoms in the crystal structure

Screw dislocation: changes the character of the atom planes

Atom planes no longer exist separately from each other. They form a single surface, like a
screw thread, which "spirals" from one end of the crystal to the other. (It is actually a helical
structure because it winds up in 3D, not like a spiral that is flat.)
Planar Defects

Planar Defect: discontinuity of the perfect crystal structure across a plane

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Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

Grain boundaries Tilt boundaries Twin boundaries Microcracks

▪ A general planar defect
▪ Separates different grains
▪ Uneven growth in solid is
crystallising
▪ Sizes: from 1 µm to 1 mm
▪ A Tilt Boundary, between
two slightly mis-aligned
grains appears as an array
of edge dislocations.
▪ Happens when the crystals
on either side of a plane
are mirror images of each
other
▪ Boundary between twinned
crystals: single plane of
atoms
▪ Grows during
crystallization, or the result
of mechanical or thermal
work
▪ Occurs where internal
broken bonds create new
surfaces
▪ About 10 µm in size
▪ The region across which
the bonds are broken is
known as the separation
plane
▪ Results of dust particles
▪ Different atoms: chemical
and physical disorder in
the grain-boundaries

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Lecture Materials on EEE-317 Electrical and Electronic Engineering, JKKNIU

Volume defects
▪ Presence of a large vacancy (crakes) or void such as clusters of atoms missing
▪ Possibility of inclusion of non-crystalline regions of dimensions of at least 10 to 30°A
during crystal growth the
▪ Also called Volume imperfection

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