Crystallographic defect | EPFL Graph Search

Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?

Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.

A crystallographic defect is an interruption of the regular patterns of arrangement of atoms or molecules in crystalline solids. The positions and orientations of particles, which are repeating at fixed distances determined by the unit cell parameters in crystals, exhibit a periodic crystal structure, but this is usually imperfect. Several types of defects are often characterized: point defects, line defects, planar defects, bulk defects. Topological homotopy establishes a mathematical method of characterization. Point defects are defects that occur only at or around a single lattice point. They are not extended in space in any dimension. Strict limits for how small a point defect is are generally not defined explicitly. However, these defects typically involve at most a few extra or missing atoms. Larger defects in an ordered structure are usually considered dislocation loops. For historical reasons, many point defects, especially in ionic crystals, are called centers: for example a vacancy in many ionic solids is called a luminescence center, a color center, or F-center. These dislocations permit ionic transport through crystals leading to electrochemical reactions. These are frequently specified using Kröger–Vink notation. Vacancy defects are lattice sites which would be occupied in a perfect crystal, but are vacant. If a neighboring atom moves to occupy the vacant site, the vacancy moves in the opposite direction to the site which used to be occupied by the moving atom. The stability of the surrounding crystal structure guarantees that the neighboring atoms will not simply collapse around the vacancy. In some materials, neighboring atoms actually move away from a vacancy, because they experience attraction from atoms in the surroundings. A vacancy (or pair of vacancies in an ionic solid) is sometimes called a Schottky defect. Interstitial defects are atoms that occupy a site in the crystal structure at which there is usually not an atom. They are generally high energy configurations.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (19)

Related people (27)

Related concepts (40)

Related courses (27)

Related lectures (136)

MSE-600: Effects of radiation on materials

The purpose of this course is to provide the necessary background to understand the effects of irradiation on pure metals and on alloys used in the nuclear industry. The relation between the radiation

EE-567: Semiconductor devices II

Students will learn about understanding the fundamentals and applications of emerging nanoscale devices, materials and concepts. Remark: at least 5 students should be enrolled for the course to be g

MSE-306: Crystalline materials: structures and properties

The properties of crystals and polycrystalline (ceramic) materials including electrical, thermal and electromechanical phenomena are studied in connection with structures, point defects and phase rela

Disorder-induced electronic, magnetic, and optoelectronic properties of two-dimensional materials

Cheol Yeon Cheon

Technological advancement has been in cadence with material development by improving the purity of single crystals and, at the same time, controlling their imperfections. These capabilities have been

EPFL2022

Deep defects in InGaN LEDs: modeling the impact on the electrical characteristics

Nicolas Grandjean, Jean-François Carlin, Camille Haller

Deep defects have a fundamental role in determining the electro-optical characteristics and in the efficiency of InGaN light-emitting diodes (LEDs). However, modeling their effect on the electrical ch

SPIE-INT SOC OPTICAL ENGINEERING2022

Spectral properties of extended systems from Koopmans-compliant functionals

Riccardo De Gennaro

Electronic-structure simulations have been impacting the study of materials properties thanks to the simplicity of density-functional theory, a method that gives access to the ground state of the syst

EPFL2022

Explores point defects and dislocations in crystals, highlighting their impact on material properties and the importance of energy relaxation.

Explores the structure and stability of defects in crystals, emphasizing their impact on material properties.

Explores the difference between ideal and real surfaces, defects, and surface reconstructions.

In materials science, a dislocation or Taylor's dislocation is a linear crystallographic defect or irregularity within a crystal structure that contains an abrupt change in the arrangement of atoms. The movement of dislocations allow atoms to slide over each other at low stress levels and is known as glide or slip. The crystalline order is restored on either side of a glide dislocation but the atoms on one side have moved by one position. The crystalline order is not fully restored with a partial dislocation.

In crystallography, crystal structure is a description of the ordered arrangement of atoms, ions, or molecules in a crystalline material. Ordered structures occur from the intrinsic nature of the constituent particles to form symmetric patterns that repeat along the principal directions of three-dimensional space in matter. The smallest group of particles in the material that constitutes this repeating pattern is the unit cell of the structure.