Computing transition rates of thermally activated events in dislocation dynamics

We present a numerical method to compute the transition rates of thermally activated events in dislocation dynamics on the atomistic scale, based on the formula from the transition state theory. The method is applied to the migration of kinks in 30 degrees partial dislocations in silicon. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the contribution of entropy to the transition rate of such events has been calculated using reliable atomistic models. (C) 2009 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.