Dislocation Multiplication in Lithium Fluoride Crystals

Abstract
Experimental observations are presented of dislocation multiplication, of the defect structure left behind by a moving dislocation, and of cross‐glide of individual dislocations in LiF crystals. New dislocation loops form at many different sites in the wake of a moving dislocation. These loops have the same Burgers vector as the parent dislocation but do not, in general, lie on the same atomic plane. The rate of formation of new loops depends upon the magnitude of the applied stress. Such creation of new loops leads eventually to the formation of a wide glide band. A moving screw dislocation trails many line defects behind it that lie parallel to its direction of motion. The existence and nature of these trails and the observed dislocation multiplication can be explained in terms of a mechanism which involves the formation, by cross‐glide, of jogs on a screw dislocation. This cross‐glide multiplication mechanism was originally proposed by Orowan and by Koehler. It is demonstrated that cross glide occurs easily in LiF, so that this mechanism is plausible. Some interesting complications arise when jogs are formed that are longer than several atomic spacings but less than several hundred. The defect trails exert a dragging of the screw dislocations that is not negligible compared to the yield stress of a crystal.

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