Kinks on partials of 60° dislocations in silicon as revealed by a novel TEM technique

The stacking fault ribbon of dissociated 60 degrees dislocations in silicon is imaged with resolution better than 0.33 nm. The dissociation width of the dislocations had been frozen in under high shear stress. It is relaxed by heating within the electron microscope. The dynamics of kinks on the partial dislocations can be analyzed in this way. We find the migration energy of kinks on 90 degrees partials to be W-m = (1.24 +/- 0.07) eV. The formation energy of a single kink is estimated to F-k = (0.73 +/- 0.15) eV. Obstacles for kink motion are observed under the beam; they are thermally overcome with activation energy E-u = 2.4 eV.