Velocity correlated crack front and surface marks in single crystalline silicon

Single crystalline silicon fractures on low-energy cleavage planes such as (111) and (110). The crack propagation cannot accurately be predicted by linear elastic fracture mechanics since it does not account for small scale and inelastic phenomena such as atomic lattice trapping. Here we show that, under pure bending load, (110) cleavage in silicon single crystal rapidly accelerates to 3700 m/s without crack path deviation or crack branching, contrasting previous observations. We highlight that the crack front shape involves strong velocity dependence and presents a curvature jump during very high-speed crack growth. In addition, we observe special marks—a kind of periodic surface undulation—that exclusively arise on the rapid fracture surfaces, and we suggest that they are front wave traces resulting from an intrinsic local velocity fluctuation. This finding gives insight to the wavy nature of the crack front in the absence of material asperity.