Shrinking stacking fault through glide of the Shockley partial dislocation in hard-sphere crystal under gravity

Abstract

Disappearance of a stacking fault in the hard-sphere crystal under gravity, such as reported by Zhu et al. [Nature 387 (1997) 883], has successfully been demonstrated by Monte Carlo simulations. We previously found that a less ordered (or defective) crystal formed above a bottom ordered crystal under stepwise controlled gravity [Mori et al. J. Chem. Phys. 124 (2006) 174507]. A defect in the upper defective region has been identified with a stacking fault for the (001) growth. We have looked at the shrinking of a stacking fault mediated by the motion of the Shockley partial dislocation; the Shockley partial dislocation terminating the lower end of the stacking fault glides. In addition, the presence of crystal strain, which cooperates with gravity to reduce stacking faults, has been observed.

7 pages, 4 figures; Molecular Physics, in press

References in corpus (3)

• Free energies of crystalline solids: a lattice-switch Monte Carlo method
• Stacking Entropy of Hard Sphere Crystals
• Molecular dynamics simulations of crystallization of hard spheres

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Interplay between elastic fields due to gravity and a partial dislocation for a hard-sphere crystal coherently grown under gravity: driving force for defect disappearance
• Monte Carlo simulation of growth of hard-sphere crystals on a square pattern
• Enlargement of Grains of Silica Colloidal Crystals by Centrifugation in an Inverted-Triangle Internal-Shaped Container
• Gravitational Annealing of Colloidal Crystals
• Possibility of Gravitational Tempering in Colloidal Epitaxy to Obtain a Perfect Crystal
• Huge broadening of the crystal-fluid interface for sedimenting colloids
• Gravitational tempering in colloidal epitaxy to reduce defects further
• Identification of triangular-shaped defects often appeared in hard-sphere crystals grown on a square pattern under gravity by Monte Carlo simulations