Study of misfit dislocations at the interface of weakly bonded metal/metal systems

Abstract The behaviour of misfit dislocations at Ag/Ni and Ag/Cu interfaces structures are discussed on the basis of calculations performed with the Embedded Atom Method (EAM). Particular attention is given to the possibility of the misfit dislocations being displaced out of the interface plane. The interface orientation chosen is (011) Ni/Cu |(011) Ag and [100] Ni/Cu |[100] Ag . Both systems have large and similar lattice mismatch but different ratios of their elastic moduli. Two different periodic cells have been considered for Ag/Ni, with opposite sign of the residual misfit. The interface energies and the structures of the regions of maximum misfit are found to be virtually independent of the periodic cell chosen. It is found that the misfit dislocations should be located at most one lattice spacing away from the interface in the lattice with the smaller lattice constant. This implies a reduction of the atomic density at the interface.