ESO225: Introduction to Materials Science

and Engineering
Course Website:Mookit
https://hello.iitk.ac.in/index.php/course/eso225sem12324

Lecture 13

Crystal Defects

Let us look at the path we travelled so far

On the ESO225 highway

ESO225

ESO225
START

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  We start a new section today…

Defect
Deꞏfect
noun
1.a shortcoming, fault, or imperfection: a defect in an
argument; a defect in a machine.
2.lack or want, especially of something essential to
perfection or completeness; deficiency: a defect in
hearing.
3.Also called crystal defect, lattice defect.
Crystallography . a discontinuity in the lattice of a crystal
caused by missing or extra atoms or ions, or by
dislocations.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/defect

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 Defects on a road

Defects:
A disturbance/deviation in the regular
arrangement of atoms in a crystal
structure
Defect free (except the surface)

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 Why do we care about defects?

Dr. Tanmoy Maiti

Industrial Data (~ 5 years ago): The integrated circuit

industry consumes ~> 10,000 tons of Si per year!!
Laboratory Data on Si: 10 mg of Fe is sufficient to
contaminate this amount of silicon to the level of 1011 cm-3

~10,000
tons!!

~ 10 mg

A Practical Question: With such possibilities of contamination,

how can a high purity of Si wafers be maintained in the
process of manufacturing of integrated circuits?

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 Defects by Dimension

 Point (Zero dimensional): Interstitials, Vacancies

 Line (1-D): Dislocations
 Surface (2-D): Grain boundaries, stacking faults
 Volume (3-D): voids formed by the cluster of the
vacancies, precipitates

Point (or zero Dimensional) Defect

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• Vacancies:
-vacant atomic sites in a structure.

Vacancy
distortion
of planes

• Self-Interstitials:
-"extra" atoms positioned between atomic sites.

self-
interstitial
distortion
of planes

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  Point (or zero Dimensional) Defect

HRTEM Image showing five nitrogen substitution defects in graphene marked by red
arrows.
http://www.nanogune.eu/en/highlights/nature-materials-high-resolution-tem-reveals-chemical-
b d /

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 Line (or 1-Dimensional) Defect
-Dislocation

Cross-sectional HRTEM lattice image of the TiN film presented

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079642506000119

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 Microstructure: Grain Boundary

10 m

100 nm

1Å

Planar (or 2-Dimensional) Defect

1. Grain
boundaries

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 Planar (or 2-Dimensional) Defect

Grain boundary

High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscope (HRTEM) Image of a

Grain Boundary Film in Strontium-Titinate
pruffle.mit.edu/~ccarter/NANOAM/images/

Planar (or 2-Dimensional) Defect

2. Stacking Fault (another example of planar defect)

http://iopscience.iop.org/0953-8984/24/4/045001/article/

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An ultra-high resolution electron microscopy image of the nanowire surface. The inset
shows the atomic stacking sequence indicative of a stacking fault.
http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/lab/31497/1/figure1

Planar (or 2-Dimensional) Defect

3. Surface (another example of planar defect)

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 Bulk or Volume (a 3-Dimensional) Defect

Point Defects in Ceramics (i) 22

• Vacancies
-- vacancies exist in ceramics for both cations and anions
• Interstitials
-- interstitials exist for cations
-- interstitials are not normally observed for anions because
anions are large relative to the interstitial sites

Cation
Interstitial
Cation
Vacancy
Adapted from Fig. 5.2, Callister &
Rethwisch 3e. (Fig. 5.2 is from
W.G. Moffatt, G.W. Pearsall, and
J. Wulff, The Structure and
Properties of Materials, Vol. 1,
Structure, John Wiley and Sons,
Inc., p. 78.)
Anion
Vacancy

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 Point Defects in Ceramics (ii) 23

• Frenkel Defect
-- a cation vacancy-cation interstitial pair.
• Shottky Defect
-- a paired set of cation and anion vacancies.

Shottky
Defect: Adapted from Fig. 5.3, Callister &
Rethwisch 3e. (Fig. 5.3 is from
W.G. Moffatt, G.W. Pearsall, and
J. Wulff, The Structure and
Properties of Materials, Vol. 1,
Structure, John Wiley and Sons,
Inc., p. 78.)
Frenkel
Defect

• Equilibrium concentration of defects  e QD /kT

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