Metal/ceramic interfaces: a microscopic analysis

This contribution treats the fundamental and practical aspects of the analy sis of interfaces between metals and ceramic materials. It is shown that, i n principle at least, it is possible to assess the bond strength by investi gating the atomic structure of the dislocation cores. We have chosen to exe mplify our approach with the misfit-dislocation structures at two, crystall ographically different, systems, i.e. cube-on-cube and cube-on-non cube int erfaces. It turns out that from high-resolution transmission electron micro scopy observations in combination with computer modelling studies a qualita tive insight can be obtained about the bonding behaviour between these diss imilar materials. In general we may conclude that there is a fair correlati on between the atomistic and linear elastic continuum description of interf ace dislocations. However, it is shown that the linear elastic continuum ap proach cannot account for the possible configurations at an interface with misfit, because it does not include the effects of different bonding streng ths on the interface structure. This contribution directs also to some futu re experimental work. Segregation of other elements might affect the local bond strength which may become manifest in the experimental observations of atomic structure. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.