Dislocation junctions as indicators of elementary slip planes in body-centered cubic metals

In body-centered cubic (bcc) metals, an unambiguous determination of the elementary slip planes remains difficult owing to several possible interpretations of the glide activity, of slip steps on the specimen surface or features of the dislocation microstructure. In this article, a method is proposed to determine the elementary slip planes in bcc metals based on the line directions of sessile junctions resulting from the interaction of mobile dislocations with ({a}/2langle 111rangle )  Burgers vector. The proposed method allows to determine slip activity inside a material and not at its surface, where other effects may play a role. It is in principle applicable to determining the elementary slip plane in any crystalline material. Particularly, it may help to resolve a long-standing debate of the nature of the elementary slip planes in bcc metals.