Papers by Keyword: Surface Steps

Abstract: Fatigue simulations are performed by using the new parallel discrete dislocation dynamics code. The effects of particles (shearable or non-shearable) on the fatigue properties, e.g. the cyclic mechanical response and the surface markings, are presented. The simulated results are found to represent the features observed in the experiments well. Fatigue of materials containing both shearable and non-shearable particles (bimodal case) is also simulated. The Orowan loops accumulated around the non-shearable particles promote a dispersion of the slips by a local cross slip, and the fatigue features of the bimodal case are in between those of the shearable and the non-shearable particle case.

Abstract: Through the use of specially-prepared on-axis SiC substrates with patterned mesa tops completely free of atomic-scale surface steps, we have previously reported the growth of highquality GaN heteroepitaxial films with greatly reduced threading dislocation densities on the order of 107/cm2. In these films, we reported a defect substructure in which lateral a-type dislocations are present in the nucleation layer but do not bow into threading dislocations during the subsequent GaN growth. This study focuses further on the role of SiC substrate surface steps in the generation of misfit, a-type, and threading dislocations at the heteroepitaxial interface. By using weak-beam imaging (both to eliminate Moiré effects and to observe narrow dislocation images) from plan-view transmission electron microscopy (TEM), we identify dislocations generated on stepped and unstepped mesas and compare their geometries. We observe that misfit dislocations nucleated on an unstepped SiC mesa are confined to one set of a-type Burgers vectors of the form g=1/3 [2110] _ _ , straight and well-ordered so that they are less likely to interact with each other. On the other hand, misfit dislocation structures on a stepped SiC mesa surface are not nearly as well-ordered, having bowed structure with threading dislocations that appear to nucleate at SiC surface steps.