Atomistic study of cross slip of a screw dislocation in Cu was presented using the action-optimization numerical technique which seeks the most probable dynamic pathway on the potential-energy surface of the atomic system during the cross-slip process. The observed mechanism revealed features of both competing mechanisms postulated in literature, i.e., the Fleischer mechanism and the Friedel-Escaig mechanism. Due to cooperative atomic motions and complex core rearrangement during the process, the activation energies of the current cross-slip mechanism were around 0.5eV less than the lowest ever reported in corresponding studies using atomistic numerical techniques.

Cooperative Atomic Motions and Core Rearrangement in Dislocation Cross Slip. S.Pendurti, S.Jun, I.H.Lee, V.Prasad: Applied Physics Letters, 2006, 88[20], 201908 (3pp)