Abstract
The density and distribution of dislocations in tip grown iron whiskers produced by the hydrogen reduction of liquid iron halide salts has been measured by means of x-ray rocking curves. The data show that the more perfect whiskers have dislocation densities below 106 dislocation lines per cm2. Thus, many of these whiskers which are less than 10 μ in diameter would contain, at most, only a small number of dislocations and should behave as perfect crystals. No evidence of a large elastic twist was found in any of the whiskers as would be expected for a whisker grown by a screw dislocation mechanism. This did not completely prove that iron whiskers must grow, therefore, by a mechanism based on coherent two-dimensional nucleation as there are combinations of specific types of screw dislocations which will not produce elastic twists in the whiskers.

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