An investigation was made of the mechanism of interface dislocation formation in a 5nm Ni film, epitaxially deposited onto 100nm of Cu(001). Threading dislocations, that pre-existed in the Cu substrate, extended into the coherent Ni overlayer during growth and propagated in the [110] and [¯110] directions along the interface. These were perfect glide dislocations of mixed character, and lay on {111} Ni planes. They were the most numerous ones in the microstructure. Lomer edge dislocations, lying on the Ni/Cu(001) interface, were also detected and constituted some 5% of the total interface dislocation content. Closely-spaced adjacent pairs of perfect glide dislocations, with the same Burgers vector, were commonly observed at the interface. The dislocation configurations were explained in terms of the ability, of favorably oriented dislocations, to cross-slip.

Formation of Misfit Dislocations in Nanoscale Ni-Cu Bilayer Films. D.Mitlin, A.Misra, V.Radmilovic, M.Nastasi, R.Hoagland, D.J.Embury, J.P.Hirth, T.E.Mitchell: Philosophical Magazine, 2004, 84[7], 719-36