Technical Papers and Notes - Institute of Metals Division - Creation of Cleavage Steps by Dislocation

WHEN a cleavage crack that is moving through a crystal intersects a screw dislocation, a jog is created in the crack front. As the crack continues to move, the jog leaves behind a cleavage step. This mechanism was proposed by Amelinckx and Votava,' Pratt, bnd Gilmanh t about the same time. At that time the evidence for the mechanism was largely indirect. Other evidence has been presented by Low, Bilby and Smith,5 and Forty.' It is the purpose of this paper to present more direct evidence of this mechanism and to show that observations of cleavage steps can be used to detect screw dislocations. Experimental Lithium-fluoride crystals that were purchased from the Harshaw Chemical Company, as well as natural mineral crystals and metal crystals, were used in the experiments. Although cleavage steps can be observed on transparent crystals with a metallurgical microscope, the contrast is poor. Marked improvement in the contrast is obtained by depositing thin (1000A) films of silver or aluminum onto the surfaces. The contrast also can be improved by using a phase-contrast microscope, but the simpler silvering method gives just as good results. Tolansky interferometric microscopy, and electron microscopy were used to measure the heights of cleavage steps. The etching techniques developed by Gilman and Johnstonh ere used to detect dislocations in the LiF crystals. Results The dislocations that create cleavage steps can originate in three ways: a) They can be grown into crystals b) They can be introduced by plastic deformation prior to cleavage c) They can be formed just in front of the tip of a propagating cleavage crack.' These three situations will be considered in turn. Grown-in Dislocations—It is not possible to see the individual monomolecular cleavage steps that emanate from isolated screw dislocations in crystals.