Planar Defects

ENMT 603006 / ENMT 613010

Wahyuaji NP – Myrna AM – Yudha P

Departemen Teknik Metalurgi dan Material FTUI

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 Planar Defects
• Grain boundary:
– Small angle grain boundary
– Large angle grain boundary

• Twinning

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• There is another class of defects called interfacial or
planar defects:
• They occupy an area or surface and are therefore bi-
dimensional.
• They are of great importance in mechanical metallurgy.
• Examples of these form of defects include:
• grain boundaries
• twin boundaries
• anti-phase boundaries
• free surface of materials
• Of all these, the grain boundaries are the most
important from the mechanical properties point of
view.
• Crystalline solids (most materials) generally consist of
millions of individual grains separated by boundaries.
• Each grain (or subgrain) is a single crystal.
• Within each individual grain there is a systematic packing
of atoms. Therefore each grain has different orientation
(see Figure 16-1) and is separated from the neighboring
grain by grain boundary.
• When the misorientation between two grains is small, the
grain boundary can be described by a relatively simple
configuration of dislocations (e.g., an edge dislocation wall)
and is, fittingly, called a low-angle boundary.
Figure 16.1. Grains in a metal or ceramic; the cube depicted in each
grain indicates the crystallographic orientation of the grain in
schematic fashion
• When the misorientation is large (high-angle grain
boundary), more complicated structures are involved
• The grain boundaries are therefore:
• where grains meet in a solid.
• transition regions between the neighboring crystals.
• Where there is a disturbance in the atomic packing, as
shown in Figure 16-2.
• These transition regions (grain boundaries) may
consist of various kinds of dislocation arrangements.
Figure 16.2. At the grain boundary, there is a disturbance in the atomic
packing.
 Low angle grain boundaries (misorientation angle < 10º)
Two extremes
TILT TWIST
An array of edge dislocations An array of screw dislocations
 Rotation axis lies on the boundary plane  Rotation axis lies  to the boundary plane

Note: these are structural dislocations* and their role in plasticity by slip is very different as
compared to random (“statistically stored”) dislocations
* With respect to interfacial misfit dislocations, Vellinga et al. (Acter Mater. 45 (1997) 1525) have said (which is an interesting viewpoint as
well):
“ These dislocations, unlike the dislocations in the bulk, are not defects but an integral part of the interfacial structure”.
 Tilt and Twist Boundaries

• The simplest grain boundary consists of a configuration of

edge dislocations between two grains.
The misfit in the orientation of the two grains (one on each
side of the boundary) is accommodated by a perturbation of
the regular arrangement of crystals in the boundary region.
• Figure 16.3 shows some vertical atomic planes termination in
the boundary and each termination is represented by an
edge dislocation.
Low angle tilt grain boundary
 A grain boundary can be constructed by truncating two crystals and putting them together.
 The structure of low angle grain boundaries can be visualized as an array of dislocations:
 Tilt boundaries consist of an array of edge dislocations*
 Twist boundaries → array of screw dislocations.
* There are alternate models based on
b an array of disclinations

‘Regions of good fit’

‘Regions of bad fit’- the

dislocation cores
 Note here we have drawn the b close to the To construct the triangle to calculate the dislocation
dislocation line (has to far away!!) spacing given a misorientation, we have to use two
successive dislocations provided by the same crystal
(crystal on the left in the figure). Hence, this is twice
the spacing between the dislocations.

b   b
 Sin  ~
2h  2 h
 As  → h (as the misorientation angle increases the dislocations get closer).
 As the dislocations come very near the cores of the
dislocations will overlap and their individual identity will
be blurred.
 This usually happens when  ~ 10-15. Hence, grain
boundaries with misorientation angle (> 10-15) are called High-
angle Grain boundaries and cannot be visualized as an array of
dislocations.
Grain boundary region*
Orientation-1
Orientation-2 


b
Note:  tan
Usual grain boundary h
* Where most of the misorientation and energy is ‘stored’ (Courtesy: Dr. Anurag Gupta) Mentioned in some texts- no physical basis
 ~8º TILT BOUNDARY IN SrTiO3 POLYCRYSTAL
 The figure below shows a high-resolution lattice fringe image (HRLFI) taken in a transmission
electron microscope (TEM). The bright lines correspond to atomic planes.
 The ‘Fourier filtered image’ shows the existence of dislocations clearly.

2.761 Å Low angle grain boundary

No visible Grain Boundary

on the left side

Fourier filtered image

Dislocation structures at
the Grain boundary
• A boundary consisting entirely of screw dislocations is
called twist boundary, because the misorientation can
be described by a relative rotation of two grains about an
axis.
• Figure 16.4 shows a twist boundary consisting of two
groups of screw dislocations.
• It is possible to produce misorientations between grains
by combined tilt and twist boundaries. In such a case,
the grain boundary structure will consist of a network of
edge and screw dislocations.
Figure 16.4. Low-angle twist boundary.
Role of Grain Boundaries
• Grain boundaries have very important role in plastic
deformation of polycrystalline materials.
• We outline below the important aspects of the role of
grain boundaries:
1. At low temperature (T<0.5Tm, where Tm is the melting
point in K), the grain boundaries act as strong
obstacles to dislocation motion. Mobile dislocations
can pile up against the grain boundaries and thus
give rise to stress concentrations that can be relaxed
by initiating locally multiple slip.
2. The smaller the grain size, the larger will be the total
boundary surface area per unit volume.
• In other words, for a given deformation in the
beginning of the stress-strain curve, the total volume
occupied by the work-hardened material increases
with the decreasing grain size.
• This implies a greater hardening due to dislocation
interactions induced by multiple slip.

3. At high temperatures the grain boundaries function

as sites of weakness.
• Grain boundary sliding may occur, leading to plastic
flow and/or opening up of voids along the boundaries.
4. Grain boundaries can act as sources and sinks for
vacancies at high temperatures, leading to diffusion
currents as, for example, in the Nabarro Herring
creep mechanism.

5. In polycrystalline materials, the individual grains

usually have a random orientation with respect to
one another.
• The term polycrystalline refers to any material which
is composed of many individual grains.
• However, some materials are actually used in their
single crystal state: silicon for integrated circuits and
nickel alloys for aircraft engine turbine blades are
two examples.
• The sizes of individual grains vary from submicrometer
(for nanocrystalline structures) to millimeters and even
centimeters (for materials especially processed for high-
temperature creep resistance).
• Figure 16.7 shows typical equiaxed grain configurations
for polycrystalline tantalum and titanium carbide.
Figure 16.7. Micrographs showing polycrystalline Tantalum
• One example of a material property that is
dependent on grain size is the strength of a material;
as grain size is increased the material becomes
weaker (see Fig.16.8). Note that
• strength is expressed in units of stress (MN/m2)
• grain size of a material can be altered (increased) by
annealing

• Hardness measurement (e.g., by vickers indenter) can

provide a measure of the strength of the material.
Figure 16.8 The dependence of strength on grain size for a number of
metals and alloys.
Grain Size Measurements

Grain structure is usually specified by giving the

average diameter. Grain size can be measured by
two methods.
(a) Lineal Intercept Technique: This is very easy and
may be the preferred method for measuring grain
size.
(b) ASTM Procedure: This method of measuring
grain size is common in engineering applications.
 Twin Boundary

• The atomic arrangement on one side of the twin boundary is related

to the other side by a symmetry operation (usually a mirror)
• Twin boundaries usually occur in pairs such that the orientation
difference introduced by one is restored by the other
• The region between the regions is called the twinned region
• In materials wherein slip is limited (e.g. BCC Fe at low T), twinning
can accommodate some plastic deformation. (TWIP steels: steels
where twinning induces plasticity).
 Twins can be classified based on various perspectives.
 The symmetry operation connecting the two twin variants can be: (i) mirror, (ii) rotation or
(iii) inversion.
Correspondingly we will have mirror, rotation or inversion twins.
 Twinning can be of: (i) geometrical entity or (ii) physical property.
 Twins can form during: (i) recrystallization (during annealing of a deformed material) or (ii)
during deformation.
 Deformation twinning is an important mechanism of plastic deformation. The process can
give some ductility in materials, which inherently poor in this regard (e.g. BCC metals like
Fe at low temperatures).
 Materials with low stacking fault energy (SFE) tend to readily twin (twins can be found in
Cu as compared to Al).

Mirror
Physical Property
Type of Twins Rotation Twining of
Geometrical entity
Inversion

Annealing twins (formed during recrystallization)

Twin
Deformation twins (formed during plastic deformation)
Mirror twins
Twinning of magnetization vectors
 The most common type of twin is a mirror twin.
 The twinning can be of a physical property like
magnetic moments or of geometrical entities like
atoms.
 As we shall see soon, the mirror plane need not
coincide with the interface plane (leading to the
concept of coherent and incoherent twins).

Physical Property
Twining of
Twinning of atomic positions
Geometrical entity

Two ‘variants’ of the twin

related by a mirror plane

Note: these are schematics

 Mirror twins
Twin terminating within the crystal

Twin extending from one grain boundary to another

Note how straight the twin boundaries are.

Twin boundaries can be very sharp (one of the rare
examples of an atomically sharp interface!).

Note how orientation change introduced by

twinning also influences the contrast on etching

Twin Boundaries

Cold worked and recrystallized Cu Sample

  How do we know if the straight lines are twin boundaries (in the micrograph below)?

 We could obtain a HRLFI (High-Resolution Lattice Fringe

Image) in a TEM and actually ‘see’ that the atomic planes
reflect across the twin boundaries.
 In the case of Copper (and some other materials with low
stacking fault energy- wherein, twinning is more common and
Twin Boundaries are ductile as well) one could use slip lines* as
crystallographic markers to identify twins (even in an optical
microscope).
Below are two micrographs (left is a light optical micrograph and right is a scanning electron
micrograph) showing slip lines ‘mirrored’ by the twin planes.

Slip lines (which are crystallographic

markers) ‘reflecting across’ a twin
boundary in Cu
* Slip line is a step created by many dislocations operating on a single slip plane → leaving the crystal surface to create a step of height nb.
Coherent and incoherent twins
 In the case of the coherent twins, the twin
boundary coincides with the mirror plane (i.e.
the plane of reflection of the atomic planes).
 In the case of the incoherent twin, these planes
are distinct. This ‘mismatch’ is accommodated
by dislocations.
 The above implies that the coherent twin
boundary is lower in energy () than the
incoherent one. A schematic of a plot of  versus
 is shown here, which is reminiscent of the
energy variation close to a -boundary (CSL).

Crystal Coherent Twin Incoherent Twin Grain boundary

boundary boundary [mJ/m2]
[mJ/m2] [mJ/m2]
Cu 21 498 623
Ag 8 126 377
Fe-Cr-Ni (SS304) 19 209 835
[1] Interfacial phenomena in metals and alloys, by L.E.Murr, Addison-Wesley, London 1975
A twin boundary separates two Pairs of twin boundaries. the
crystalline regions that are, orientation difference introduced
structurally, mirror images of each by one is restored by the other
other.
 Twin boundary in Fe doped SrTiO3 bicrystals (artificially prepared)
High-resolution micrograph

Mirror related
variants

Twin plane

[1] S. Hutt, O. Kienzle, F. Ernst and M. Rühle, Z Metallkd, 92 (2001) 2

 Twinning
High-resolution Transmission
Electron Microscope image of
a tilt grain boundary in
aluminum, Sandia National
Lab.

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Stacking faults and twinning in Si (HRTEM)
Twinning in brass (optical micrograph)