Relative mobility of screw versus edge dislocations controls the ductile-to-brittle transition in metals

Body-centered cubic metals including steels and refractory metals suffer from an abrupt ductile-to-brittle transition (DBT) at a critical temperature, hampering their performance and applications. Temperature-dependent dislocation mobility and dislocation nucleation have been proposed as the potential factors responsible for the DBT. However, the origin of this sudden switch from toughness to brittleness still remains a mystery. Here, we discover that the ratio of screw dislocation velocity to edge dislocation velocity is a controlling factor responsible for the DBT. A physical model was conceived to correlate the efficiency of Frank–Read dislocation source with the relative mobility of screw versus edge dislocations. A sufficiently high relative mobility is a prerequisite for the coordinated movement of screw and edge segments to sustain dislocation multiplication. Nanoindentation experiments found that DBT in chromium requires a critical mobility ratio of 0.7, above which the dislocation sources transition from disposable to regeneratable ones. The proposed model is also supported by the experimental results of iron, tungsten, and aluminum.

Extension of Stacking Faults in 4H-SiC pn Diodes under a High Current Pulse Stress

We investigated the expansion of stacking faults (SFs) under a high current pulse stress in detail. In situ observations showed bar-shaped SFs and two types of triangle SFs with different nucleation sites. The calculated partial dislocation velocity of the bar-shaped SFs was four times faster than that of the triangle SFs. The temperature dependence of the partial dislocation velocity was used to estimate activation energies of 0.23±0.02 eV for bar-shaped SFs and 0.27±0.05 eV for triangle SFs. We also compared the electrical characteristics before and after the stress. The forward voltage drop slightly increased by 0.05 V, and the leakage current did not increase.

A Dislocation Pile-Up Computation for Adiabatic Shear Banding

ABSTRACTA model is presented for computing the temperature increase associated with the formation of an adiabatic shear band. The hypothesis is that the heating is supplied by the difference in energy of a pile-up of n dislocations and the energy of n individual dislocations. The heating is assumed to occur within a volume determined by the grain size (i.e. slip band length) and an effective thermal length determined by the dislocation velocity. The model predicts increases in temperature with increasing shear modulus (G), increasing numbers of piled up dislocations (n), increasing Burgers vector (b), increased grain size (d), and increased dislocation velocity (vd). Increasing temperature is also predicted with decreasing heat capacity (c*) and thermal diffusivity (α) as would be expected. The model was applied to low carbon steel for which considerable data are available. Application to low carbon steel gives a temperature increase of about 1400K. The implied result that untempered martensite should be observed after adiabatic shear banding is in agreement with examples cited in the literature. Further investigation into the dynamics of pile-up release and the associated heat transfer mechanisms is discussed.

Separation of the Driving Force and Radiation-Enhanced Dislocation Glide in 4H-SiC

Anomalous expansion of stacking faults (SFs) induced in 4H-SiC under electronic excitations is driven by an electronic force and is achieved by enhanced glide of partial dislocations. An experimental attempt to separate the two physically different effects has been made by conducting photoluminescence (PL) mapping experiments which allowed simultaneous measurements of partial dislocation velocity and SF-originated PL intensity the latter of which is proposed to be related to the driving force for SF expansion through the density of free excitons planarly confined in the SF.

Determination of the internal stress and dislocation velocity stress exponent with indentation stress relaxation test

Indentation stress relaxation tests were carried out on high-purity polycrystalline copper specimens at room temperature with a flat cylindrical indenter. The experimental results showed that the resulting load-time relaxation curves can be described by a power law, which coupled an internal stress and an integral constant between the effective stress and relaxation time. Then the internal stress, integral constant, and dislocation velocity stress exponent can be extracted from load relaxation curves. The derived values from this way were consistent with the results of conventional uniaxial compression stress relaxation tests. These agreements are not only useful to understand deformation (dislocation) mechanisms under the indenter, but also exhibit an attractive potential of measuring nano/micromechanical properties of materials by indentation test.