Point Defects in Crystals

One more hard day of studying. So I was going through point defects in crystals. Before reading about point defects please understand what crystals are and why you need to study their internal structures and how defects effect the structure sensitive properties of the material

This stuff is really interesting in itself. You gotta study a lot from vacancy, interstitial defects, constitutional impurity, Schotty defect, Frenkel defect and all such. 

Also study what enthalpy of formation is? How to calculate the same? The effects of defects on the bonds between atoms, on the stress and strain and elasticity ....

The material science & Engineer by Raghavan &  Material Science by RS Khurmi & RS Sedha are good books for the same. I am following the later

The basics of point defects in crystals can be summarzied as follows:

• Vacancy – missing atom at a certain crystal lattice position; 
• Interstitial impurity atom – extra impurity atom in an interstitial position
• Self-interstitial atom – extra atom in an interstitial position; 
• Substitution impurity atom – impurity atom, substituting an atom in crystal lattice; 
•  Frenkel defect – extra self-interstitial atom, responsible for the vacancy nearby.

The above summary is taken from www.substech.com. Please refer to them for further info. 


A lot more stuff has to be studied regarding effects of defects in the crystal, the calculation of equilibrium concentration of vacancies, drawing miller indices for given plane and for given crystal direction and all such.... Geez will this ever end???


Don't forget to grab a copy of Material Science and Engineering book, which is essential for preparing for AMIE, Material Science.

with warm regards

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