Mobility of screw dislocations absorbed in symmetric tilt grain boundaries in Al

Abstract

ABSTRACT The strength and ductility of polycrystalline metals are influenced by the interactions between dislocations and grain boundaries, particularly when the grain size is small. One possible reaction is the absorption of dislocations into the grain boundary structure; however, the mobility of the resulting grain boundary dislocations (GBDs) remains largely unexplored. Thus, the objective of this work is to determine the mobility of GBDs arising from the absorption of lattice screw dislocations into Σ3{111} and Σ11{113} <110> symmetric tilt grain boundaries (STGBs) in Al. Atomistic simulations reveal a reduction in Peierls stress of ∼80% and phonon damping coefficient of ∼65% for GBDs in the {111}<110> STGB compared to lattice screw dislocations. This significant mobility increase is caused by the complete dissociation of the absorbed dislocation. The Peierls stress of GBDs in the {113}<110> STGB is increased to almost 8 times that of the lattice screw dislocation due to the smaller interplanar spacing between slip planes. This work provides a structural justification for the absorption reactions and demonstrates that the mobility of an absorbed dislocation is highly sensitive to the structure of the host grain boundary. Ultimately, mobility laws are provided which can be used to model GBD motion in mesoscale simulations.