Analyzing the cross slip motion of screw dislocations at finite temperatures in body-centered-cubic metals; Molecular statics and dynamics studies

Suzudo, Tomoaki   ; Onitsuka, Takashi*; Fukumoto, Kenichi*

Plasticity of body-centered-cubic (BCC) metals at low temperatures is determined by screw dislocation kinetics. Because the core of screw dislocation in these metals has non-planar structure, its motion is complex and unpredictable. For example, although density functional theory (DFT) predicts slip on a { 110 } plane, the actual slip plane at elevated temperatures departs from the prediction, its mechanism having been a mystery for decades. Here we conduct a series of molecular dynamics simulations to track the screw dislocation motion and successfully reproduced the transition of the slip plane. We then devised an algorithm to scrutinize the activation of dislocation jump over the Peierls barrier and discovered the possible origin of this unexpected phenomenon, i.e., a large fluctuation leads to the kink-pair nucleation for the cross-slip jump without transition of dislocation core structure.