Non-planar dislocations: 3D models and thermally-activated glide processes

In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in studying the cross-slip of screw dislocations in the simple face-centred cubic (FCC) structure. This paper serves to address parallel developments in modelling the cross-slip of screw dislocations in the body-centred cubic (BCC) structure and the ordered L12 structure. In the latter two cases, the dislocation cores have non-planar spreading offering high intrinsic Peierls stresses. The flow behaviours of these materials, such as the non-Schmid behaviour and temperature-dependence of flow stress, are largely due to the behaviours of single dislocations. 3D atomistic modelling of the minimum-energy path for the glide processes in these cases is performed with an aim to reconcile with experimentally determined activation energies for slip.