The stability to recombination of narrow edge-dislocation dipoles of vacancy-type was investigated by using atomic-scale simulations and phenomenological n-body potentials which were adapted for these metals. The stable and metastable equilibrium positions of edge-dipole configurations were considered, and the effect of the dissociation width was estimated. The calculations showed that, in Al, edge dipoles athermally annihilated at distances which were much larger than the Burgers-vector length of perfect dislocations. In the case of Cu, the dislocations which made up the dipole recombined only when they were in close contact. The results were explained in terms of surface energies, on the basis of existing theoretical and experimental work.

Numerical Study of the Athermal Annihilation of Edge-Dislocation Dipoles. A.Aslanides, V.Pontikis: Philosophical Magazine A, 2000, 80[10], 2337-53