Universal scaling of the temperature dependence of the strength of crystals governed by the Peierls mechanism

Abstract

The temperature dependences of the critical resolved shear stress (CRSS) governed by the Peierls mechanism in pure NaCl type crystals, those in pure bcc transition metals, those by dissociated dislocations in covalent crystals of the diamond and the zinc blende structures and those by perfect dislocations at low temperatures in zinc blende crystals have been demonstrated to be roughly scalable with respect to the non-dimensional normalization of the CRSS by the shear modulus G and the temperature by Gb3/kB, where b is the strength of the Burgers vector and kB the Boltzmann constant. Furthermore, CRSS vs. T relations have been shown to be scaled universally by normalizing respectively the CRSS by the estimated Peierls stress τp and the temperature by the kink-pair energy parameter of (τp/G)1/2(bd)3/2G/kB, where d is the period of the Peierls potential. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.