Modelling of HREM and nanodiffraction for dislocation kinks and core reconstruction

The ability to directly image individual dislocation kinks (Kolar H er al 1 996 Phys. Rev. Lett. 77 4031) opens up many possibilities for the study of kink dynamics by in situ TEM. Unfortunately, this technique is limited by s urface roughness. For ceramics, however, high temperature annealing has bee n found to produce inert and atomically smooth surfaces that even survive a mbient pressures (Susnitzky D 1992 J. Am. Ceram. Sec. 75 2463). We have pre pared such samples of 3C-SiC. in order to image kinks by the forbidden refl ections method. Using multislice simulations for 30 and 90 degrees partial dislocations in Si we show that not only the number of kinks along the disl ocation core can be determined, but also their structure assuming an aberra tion corrected TEM. We also show how the recently proposed double period reconstruction along t he 90 degrees partial dislocation in Si can easily be verified experimental ly using convergent beam electron diffraction.