Plastic deformation of Si at low temperature under high confining pressure

Macroscopic plastic deformation of silicon single crystals has been achieved at RT and 150°C under a confining pressure of 5 GPa in a multi-anvil apparatus. TEM observations of a sample deformed at 150°C show that the deformation microstructure is built with dislocations with 12a1 1 0 Burgers vector in (1 1 1) planes which are undissociated. They appear as mainly aligned along the screw orientation and 〈1 1 2〉 orientations at 30° from the Burgers vector. Those features are analysed in the light of perfect dislocation generation in the shuffle set.