Damage nucleation and vacancy-induced structural transformation in Si grain boundaries

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Atomic resolution Z-contrast scanning transmission electron microscopy reveals preferential nucleation of electron-beam-induced damage in select atomic columns of a Si tilt grain boundary. Atomic scale simulations find that the region of initial damage nucleation corresponds to columns where the formation energies of vacancies and vacancy complexes are very low. The calculations further predict that vacancy accumulation in certain pairs of columns can induce a structural transformation to low-density dislocation “pipes” with all atoms fourfold coordinated.