Thermal Initiation of Screw Dislocations in Polymer Crystal Platelets

Abstract

It is shown that thermal fluctuations coupled with an applied shear stress can possibly yield a workable mechanism for the initiation of screw dislocations in polymer platelets. The activation energy of such a process lies at about 1 eV within the present knowledge of crystal elastic and dislocation parameters. This is approximately the energy required for such a mechanism to be successful.