Plastic deformation of Si at low temperature under high confining pressure

Macroscopic plastic deformation of silicon single crystals has been achieve d at RT and 150 degreesC under a confining pressure of 5 GPa in a multi-anv il apparatus. TEM observations of a sample deformed at 150 degreesC show th at the deformation microstructure is built with dislocations with 1/2a <1 1 0 > Burgers vector in (1 1 1) planes which are undissociated. They appear as mainly aligned along the screw orientation and (1 1 2) orientations at 3 0 degrees from the Burgers vector. Those features are analysed in the light of perfect dislocation generation in the shuffle set. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc ience B.V. All rights reserved.