Individual edge dislocations created by heat treating indentations on thenside of a shallow phosphorus‐diffused siliconp‐njunction have been detected by the scanning electron beam technique. The width of contrast produced by edge dislocations is close to 1 &mgr; in agreement with expectation. The contrast mechanism is discussed and can be explained by enhanced recombination at dislocations with an edge component. Furthermore, it is shown that oxygen precipitates in silicon can be displayed as well as individual dislocations introduced by twisting the crystal.