Fig. 5: Images and measures of misfit dislocation networks.

a Evolution of the areal density of dislocations L/A = 1/Λ during growth of crystals with different degrees of lattice mismatch. b Three examples of dislocation networks marked in (a) and (c). The average dislocation spacing Λ = (L/A)⁻¹ and segment length l are illustrated by double arrows in examples I and II, respectively. Examples of Hirth sessile threads (blue) and blocking by perpendicular segments are indicated by blue and green arrows, respectively. Note that the apparent discontinuity of the segments at the crossing points in examples I and III is due to a failure of the dislocation detection algorithm. c Evolution of l/Λ with h. See legend in (a). a–c Examples I and II demonstrate networks with distinct structure, despite an identical values of L/A. In contrast, examples I and III show crystals of the same thickness. Their networks are similar: both are characterized by l/Λ ≈ 6, despite a significant difference in areal dislocation density. The time evolution of the networks is shown in Supplementary Movies 3 and 4. The shadows in (a) and (c) denote the variation over five distinct observation regions of a growing crystal.