Orientation dependent elastic interaction between a truncated stacking fault tetrahedron and a glissile dislocation

The orientation dependence of elastic interaction between a stacking fault tetrahedron (SFT) and mobile dislocations is investigated for the possibility of unfaulting and subsequent absorption of the SFT. The obtained result indicates that 60degrees dislocations have stronger interaction with the spontaneously truncated SFT than pure screws or edges. Due to the high activation energy, the collapse and absorption of the SFTs seems to be limited to the cases where the approaching dislocations along <110> directly cut the SFTs symmetrically. The anisotropic energetics can contribute to the spatially limited growth of defect-cleared channels observed in the irradiated materials. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.