Nucleation and growth of dislocation loops in Cu, Al and Si by a concurrent atomistic-continuum method

Submicron-sized samples with 42,000 finite elements containing up to ∼86 million atoms have been simulated using a concurrent atomistic-continuum method. The simulations reproduce not only nucleation and growth of semicircular dislocation loops in Cu and Al, but also hexagonal shuffle dislocation loops in Si, with the loop radius approaching ∼75 nm. Details of leading and trailing partial dislocations connected by intrinsic stacking faults, dislocation loop coalescence through annihilation, and formation of junctions are reproduced.