Abstract
Minimum energy paths for generating intrinsic, extrinsic and twin planar faults were calculated for a number of face-centered cubic (fcc) metals via ab initio techniques. It is found that when the lattice is faulted sequentially, the interaction with the existing fault tends to remain minimal for nearly all the fcc metals. Accordingly, a universal scaling law may be deduced based on a single parameter, namely the ratio between the intrinsic stacking fault energy and the relevant energy barrier.