Observations of Dislocation Motion by Etch Hillocks in White Tin Single Crystals

Abstract

Pyramidal etch hillocks are produced on the {001} surfaces of 99.999% pure white tin single crystals at the sites of both fresh and aged dislocations with the highly selective etchant. Hillocks grow with a constant rate during the etching period. The growth rate of the edge length of a hillock is about 2.1×10^-2 µ/sec. When the crystals are strained in the etchant, etch traces of hillocks are produced just along the loci of the moving dislocations. In this case, various modes of dislocation motion can be discriminated in moving direction, velocity and its variation from the appearances of traces.