It was shown that the stable hollow core of a dislocation could act as the initial site of micro-pipe development. The strain energy which was required in order to estimate the thermodynamic stability of a hollow dislocation core could be expressed in terms of macroscopic parameters such as the Young’s modulus and the Grüneisen constant. The calculated strain energy of the dislocation core was found to be essentially equal to the evaporation energy of the crystal.

Dislocations as a Source of Micropipe Development in the Growth of Silicon Carbide. D.I.Cherednichenko, Y.I.Khlebnikov, I.I.Khlebnikov, R.V.Drachev, T.S.Sudarshan: Journal of Applied Physics, 2001, 89[7], 4139-41