Direct observations of the annealing of stacking-fault tetrahedra in gold using high voltage electron microscopy

The annealing of stacking-fault tetrahedra in gold has been observed directly using high voltage electron microscopy. It is concluded that tetrahedra anneal by vacancy emission from jog-lines propagating across the faces of the tetrahedra. An analysis of the annealing kinetics based on such a shrinkage model has yielded a value for the jog-line energy in the range 0·4–0·8 eV/atom plane for (assumed) values of the stacking-fault energy between 30 and 120 ergs/cm2. The results of previous indirect studies are reviewed in terms of the present work.