On
the perfection of cleavage planes of potassium bichromate single crystals
Department of Applied Physics, Institute of Physics,
Lublin University of Technology,
ul. Nadbystrzycka 38, 20-618 Lublin, Poland
Abstract
The
relative perfection of the 001, 100 and 100 cleavage planes of potassium
bichromate single crystals is analysed by calculations of the surface energy of
main crystallographic planes. The surface energy was determined
for the three cleavage planes as well as for planes corresponding to other
theoretically possible orientations. It was found that: (1) among different planes
the calculated values of the surface energy of the 001, 100 and 010 cleavage
planes of potassium bichromate are the lowest, (2) among the three cleavage
planes the 001 perfect cleavage plane has the lowest surface energy, (3)
the relative perfection of different cleavage planes can be explained by using
the coefficient d
proportional
to the ratio of the surface energy of the hkl cleavage plane to the
energy of dislocations emerging on the plane, and (4) the lower the values of the coefficient d
for a cleavage plane, the better is the cleavage perfection.