Crack tip dislocations revealed by electron tomography in silicon single crystal

Crack tip dislocations in silicon single crystals have been observed by a combination of annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy and computed tomography. A series of images was acquired by maintaining the diffraction vector parallel to that of crack propagation to achieve sharp images of the dislocations. The observed dislocations were reconstructed by a filtered back-projection, and exhibited three-dimensional configurations of overlaid dislocations around the crack tip.