Crystal Defects

• Point Defects (0 dimensional)

– Intrinsic – vacancies, self-interstitials
– Extrinsic – impurity substitutions, impurity
interstitials
• Line Defects (1 dimensional)
– Dislocations, dominate deformation mechanisms
– Dislocation movement results in plastic
deformation
– This lowers the strength, but improves the ductility
• Planar Defects (2 dimensional)
– Grain boundaries

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 Point Defects
• Point defects - Imperfections, such as vacancies, that are
located typically at one site, or in some cases a few sites,
in the crystal.
• Vacancy - An atom or an ion missing from its regular
crystallographic site.
• Interstitial defect - A point defect produced when an atom
is placed into the crystal at a site that is normally not a
lattice point.
• Substitutional defect - A point defect produced when an
atom is removed from a regular lattice point and replaced
with a different atom, usually of a different size.

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 Point Defects

(c) 2003 Brooks/Cole Publishing / Thomson Learning

All of these defects disrupt the arrangement of the surrounding atoms.

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From Previous Chart…

(a) vacancy
(b) interstitial impurity
(c) small substitutional atom
(d) large substitutional atom
(e) Frenkel defect
(f) Schottky defect.

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 Effects of Point Defects
Impurity ions absorb
selectively, giving
rise to color.

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 Line Defects - Dislocations
• Dislocations are line
defects with missing rows
of atoms
• Dislocations can glide
along slip planes under
shear stress or climb under
stress and temperature
• Dislocation movement can
cause yielding and plastic
(permanent) deformation

Schematics from T. H. Courtney: Mechanical Behavior of Materials

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 Edge Dislocation

The perfect crystal in (a) is cut and an extra plane of

atoms is inserted (b). The bottom edge of the extra plane
is an edge dislocation (c). A Burgers vector b is required
to close a loop of equal atom spacings around the edge
dislocation.
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 Screw Dislocation
Learning
(c) 2003 Brooks/Cole Publishing / Thomson

The perfect crystal (a) is cut and sheared one atom spacing,
(b) and (c). The line along which shearing occurs is a screw
dislocation. A Burgers vector b is required to close a loop of
equal atom spacings around the screw dislocation.
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“Wrinkle in the carpet” analogy 10
 Dislocation Movement leads to Slip Lines

Shown in this
micrograph is
an aircraft
grade Ti-alloy
after tensile test
deformation.

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 Planar Defects - Grain Boundaries
Types of Grain Boundaries

The small angle grain

boundary is produced
by an array of
dislocations, causing
an angular mismatch
θ between lattices on
Thomson Learning
either side of the (c) 2003 Brooks/Cole Publishing /

boundary.

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 Lines of etch pits represent low angle
grain boundaries

Optical image of etch pits in silicon carbide

(SiC). The etch pits correspond to
intersection points of edge dislocations at
the polished surface (M. Skronowski, CMU).
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 Twin Boundaries
Learning
(c) 2003 Brooks/Cole Publishing / Thomson

Application of a stress to the perfect crystal (a) may cause a

displacement of the atoms, (b) causing the formation of a twin.
Note that the crystal has deformed as a result of twinning.
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 Grain Boundaries
Grain boundaries are 2-D defects.
GB’s can serve both as sources
and sinks for dislocations.
When grains are micron-sized,
the number of dislocations per
grain is large. GB’s are usually
sinks for dislocations or obstacles
to their motion.
When grains are nano-sized,
there are few dislocations, and
GB’s are sources of dislocations.
(We will return to the topic of grain
boundaries in PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
AND CONSOLIDATION.)
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 Be sure you can answer these questions:

• Which defects are intrinsic, and which are

extrinsic?
• Can the number and type of defects be
varied and controlled?
• How do defects affect material properties?
(Look at hand-out on “defects”.)
• Are defects always undesirable?

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