Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-materials-science-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2015/paper-1/4/b/solution

A Shockley partial dislocation in an FCC slip plane has Burgers vector of the family . Its vector must lie in the specified plane, and the two vectors must sum to the perfect dislocation vector.
For the first plane normal , one allowed dissociation is
The vectors add to , and , .
For ,
Their sum is , and both have zero dot product with . Interchanging leading and trailing labels does not change these vector identities.
Each perfect vector has squared magnitude , whereas the sum of the two partial squared magnitudes is . The line-energy estimate proportional to therefore favors separation, opposed by the stacking-fault energy of the ribbon between the partials.

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