Stability and dynamics of Frenkel pairs in si.
Extensive experiments and calculation have shown that interstitials in p-Si diffuse athermally, leading to the conclusion that vacancy-interstitial pairs, or Frenkel pairs (FPs), either rapidly recombine or dissociate, even at cryogenic temperatures. More recent experiments, however, suggest that FPs persist to 150 K. Here we report first-principles calculations of FP properties and resolve the apparent conflict between experiments by showing that athermal interstitial diffusion is suppressed in proximal FPs due to vacancy-interstitial interactions.
Beck
M J
MJ
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37235, USA. m.beck@vanderbilt.edu
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