Kinetic origin of grain boundary migration, grain coalescence, and defect reduction in the crystallization of quenched two-dimensional Yukawa liquids.

Abstract

The kinetic origin of grain boundary migration, grain coalescence, and defect reduction in the crystallization of quenched two-dimensional Yukawa liquids are numerically investigated. It is found that, in grain coalescence, stick-slip cracking the region in front of the grain boundary into smaller subgrains corotating with small angle, followed by healing, is the key for aligning lattice misorientation and inducing grain boundary stick-slip advance. Cracking is initiated from the weakly interlocked dislocation along its Burgers vector, which in turn causes dislocation motion along the crack. The cascaded scattering and recombination of two dislocations with 60^{∘} and 120^{∘} Burgers vector angle difference into two and one dislocations are the major processes for dislocation motion and reduction, respectively, in grain boundary migration. A rough grain boundary with large curvature easily supports the above process and induces high grain boundary mobility. Along a straight smooth grain boundary, the parallel Burgers vectors of the string of dislocations hinder defect reduction and induce coalescence stagnation.