Room-temperature deformation of single crystals of WC investigated by micropillar compression

The room temperature deformation behavior of single crystals of WC has been investigated as a function of crystal orientation and specimen size by micropillar compression tests. Plastic flow is successfully observed at room temperature by the operation of slip on {01 1 ¯ 0}〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 3〉 when the specimen size is reduced to micrometer orders. This slip system is the only operative slip system in WC at room temperature, and thus plastic flow is not observed for crystal orientations close to the c-axis orientation. The bulk critical resolve shear stress (CRSS) is estimated to be 1.2 ± 0.3 GPa from the extrapolation of the size-dependent CRSS. The 1/3〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 3〉 dislocation carrying slip on {01 1 ¯ 0} dissociates into two identical collinear partial dislocations separated by a stacking fault with the energy of 211∼264 mJ/m ². The preference of slip along 〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 3〉 among possible directions (such as 〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 0〉 and [0001]) on the {01 1 ¯ 0} prism plane is discussed in terms of dislocation self-energy based on anisotropic elasticity, stacking fault energy, dislocation dissociation and Peierls stress for dislocation motion. The lowest Peierls stress arising from the shorter Burgers vector (1/6〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 3〉) of dislocations as a result of collinear dissociation of dislocations with b = 1/3〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 3〉 on the {01 1 ¯ 0} slip plane is considered to be the main reason for the preference of the {01 1 ¯ 0}〈2 1 ¯ 1 ¯ 3〉 slip system.