Shear planes cation relaxation

Figure 1 Schematic representation of shear-plane formation, (a) Aligned vacancies in cross-section of hypothetical structure (b) Shear plane formed by vacancy elimination arrows indicate direction of relaxations of cations adjacent to shear plane)...

Thus to summarize, the extent of cation relaxation around a shear plane has emerged from our analysis as the most decisive factor in stabilizing shear planes with respect to point defect structures. Our discussion now continues with an account of the behaviour of the crystals at low deviations from stoicheiometry where an equilibrium may exist between point and extended defect structures. 

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