Stress field and interaction forces of dislocations in anisotropic multilayer thin films

Abstract

Utilizing Fourier transforms, the elastic field of three-dimensional dislocation loops in anisotropic multilayer materials is developed. Green's functions and their derivatives, obtained first in the Fourier domain and then in the real domain by numerical inversion, are used in integrals to determine the elastic field of dislocation loops. The interaction forces between dislocations and free surfaces or interfaces in multilayer thin films are then investigated. The developed method is based on rigorous elasticity solutions for dislocations approaching to within one to two atomic planes from the interface. For a dislocation in one layer, the interface image force is determined mainly by the elastic moduli and thicknesses of neighbouring layers. When a dislocation approaches an interface between two layers, within 10–20 atomic planes, the image force changes rapidly. Interaction forces are then kept constant up to the interface. The model shows that, when a dislocation crosses an interface from a soft to a hard layer, additional external forces must be applied to overcome an elastic mismatch barrier. The developed method extends the concept of the Kohler barrier in 2D, and shows that the interface force barrier not only depends on the relative ratio of the elastic moduli of neighbouring layers, but also on the 3D shape of the dislocation, the number of interacting adjacent layers, and on layer thicknesses.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for this research through grant no. DMR-0113555, and the support of the U.S. Air Force Office for Scientific Research (AFOSR) through grant no. F49620-03-1-0031 with UCLA.