Electromigration along dislocation cores was considered to be a mass-transport mechanism, in conducting lines of bamboo-like grains, at homologous temperatures of less than 0.5. Given that the dislocation density in annealed metals could be insufficient to account for the observed mass-transport rate, the present work focused on electromigration-induced dislocation motion and multiplication. It was found that a prismatic loop climbed as a rigid ring as electromigration relocated atoms, along the core, from one portion on the loop to another. Each loop was therefore a mass carrier, in that a vacancy loop migrated towards the cathode and an interstitial loop migrated towards the anode. A thread of edge dislocation multiplied prismatic loops under a sufficiently high electric field. A bamboo grain-boundary caught loops on one side and emitted them on the other.

Z.Suo: Acta Metallurgica et Materialia, 1994, 42[11], 3581-8