Harnessing dislocation motion using an electric field

Abstract

Dislocations, line defects in crystalline materials, play an essential role in the mechanical[1,2], electrical[3], optical[4], thermal[5], and phase transition[6] properties of these materials. Dislocation motion, an important mechanism underlying crystal plasticity, is critical for the hardening, processing, and application of a wide range of structural and functional materials[1,7,8]. For decades, the movement of dislocations has been widely observed in crystalline solids under mechanical loading[9-11]. However, the goal of manipulating dislocation motion via a non-mechanical field alone remains elusive. Here, we present real-time observations of dislocation motion controlled solely by an external electric field in single-crystalline zinc sulfide (ZnS). We find that 30° partial dislocations can move back and forth depending on the direction of the electric field, while 90° partial dislocations are motionless. We reveal the nonstoichiometric nature of dislocation cores using atomistic imaging and determine their charge characteristics by density functional theory calculations. The glide barriers of charged 30° partial dislocations, which are lower than those of 90° partial dislocations, further decrease under an electric field, explaining the experimental observations. This study provides direct evidence of dislocation dynamics under a non-mechanical stimulus and opens up the possibility of modulating dislocation-related properties.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-023-01572-7

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Alternating Bias Assisted Annealing of Amorphous Oxide Tunnel Junctions
• Room-temperature dislocation plasticity in ceramics: Methods, Materials, and Mechanisms
• Direct evidence and atomic-scale mechanisms of reduced dislocation mobility in an inorganic semiconductor under illumination
• Log-normal glide and the formation of misfit dislocation networks in heteroepitaxial ZnS on GaP
• Enhancement of superconductivity outside an Abrikosov vortex core in a tightly bound Cooper pair superconductor
• A common origin of photoplastic and electroplastic effects in ZnS