Theory of electron–phonon–dislon interacting system—toward a quantized theory of dislocations

Abstract

We provide a comprehensive theoretical framework to study how crystal dislocations influence the functional properties of materials, based on the idea of a quantized dislocation, namely a ‘dislon’. In contrast to previous work on dislons which focused on exotic phenomenology, here we focus on their theoretical structure and computational power. We first provide a pedagogical introduction that explains the necessity and benefits of taking the dislon approach and why the dislon Hamiltonian takes its current form. Then, we study the electron–dislocation and phonon–dislocation scattering problems using the dislon formalism. Both the effective electron and phonon theories are derived, from which the role of dislocations on electronic and phononic transport properties is computed. Compared with traditional dislocation scattering studies, which are intrinsically single-particle, low-order perturbation and classical quenched defect in nature, the dislon theory not only allows easy incorporation of quantum many-body effects such as electron correlation, electron–phonon interaction, and higher-order scattering events, but also allows proper consideration of the dislocation’s long-range strain field and dynamic aspects on equal footing for arbitrary types of straight-line dislocations. This means that instead of developing individual models for specific dislocation scattering problems, the dislon theory allows for the calculation of electronic structure and electrical transport, thermal transport, optical and superconducting properties, etc, under one unified theory. Furthermore, the dislon theory has another advantage over empirical models in that it requires no fitting parameters. The dislon theory could serve as a major computational tool to understand the role of dislocations on multiple materials’ functional properties at an unprecedented level of clarity, and may have wide applications in dislocated energy materials.

Keywords

• dislocations
• effective theory
• transport properties