The velocities of dislocations, within experimental ranges of temperature and stress, were studied by combining a mechanistic treatment of elementary kink processes with activation energies which were deduced from atomistic calculations. A marked effect of intrinsic coupling of the dissociated partial dislocations was reproduced by kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. This was consistent with observed velocity variations as a function of the applied stress. As a result, the nature of so-called weak obstacles to kink propagation was clarified. A striking new effect was predicted, which required experimental verification. This was that the dislocation velocity exhibited a non-monotonic oscillatory behavior with increasing stress.

Intrinsic Mobility of a Dissociated Dislocation in Silicon W.Cai, V.V.Bulatov, J.E.Justo, A.S.Argon, S.Yip: Physical Review Letters, 2000, 84[15], 3346-9