text: These planar defects are similar to stacking faults in that they are often created through slip of atomic planes and dislocation motion, but the degree of translation varies. In stacking faults, the region of stacking mismatch is bounded by two partial dislocations, and an extended dislocation is formed. For anti-phase domains which only exhibit chemical disorder, the region is bounded by two complex stacking faults, which exhibit both stacking and chemical disorder. Thus, it takes 4 partial dislocations to fully restore the order of the crystal. These can be seen in Figure 1 and 2 below. The width of these regions is determined by the force balance between the like-signed partial dislocations’ repulsion and the regions surface energy. As the anti-phase boundary surface energy increases, the degree of separation between the partial dislocations will decrease to compensate.
  Figure 1: This figure depicts two layers of atoms in a Ni3Al crystal, a binary alloy that often exhibits anti-phase boundaries. For visualization purposes, the atoms in the bottom layer are shown as larger than the top layer, but this is not actually the case. The translation of the top layer can be broken down into two steps, indicated by the small arrows 1 and 2. (b) The partial sliding of the top layer by the short vector 1 leads to the formation of a complex stacking fault. (c) The complete sliding of the top layer with the translation magnitude given by a unit lattice translation (1+2), resulting in the formation of an anti-phase boundary. If the top plane slips by two complete lattice spacings (1, 2, 3, and 4), a superdislocation is formed, and this is required for the perfect crystal structure to be restored. It is expected that this superdislocation, consisting of two perfect lattice translations, dissociates into four different partial dislocations with two on each side. 
  Figure 2: An antiphase boundary created by four partial dislocations (1,2,3,4), surrounded by complex stacking faults. Outside of these shaded regions, the crystal is perfect.