The lateral growth strain accompanying the formation of a thermally grown oxide Original Research Article

The high-temperature oxidation of alloys produces an oxide that grows laterally as well as thickening with time. Constrained by the underlying alloy being oxidized, the lateral strain produces a compressive stress in the growing oxide. The lateral growth strain is modeled using a dislocation climb process in which “unlucky” counter-diffusing cations and anions are trapped at cores of dislocations. The model predicts that at a fixed oxidation temperature the lateral growth strain rate increases linearly with the oxide thickening rate in accord with observations.