What is it about?
What happens if you have one or several silicon atoms extra or missing in a piece of crystalline silicon? We used a special simulation technique to find out how these point defects stick together and move around (you cannot really see that in an experiment, and it's too complicated to study with standard simulations). We see that there are many more complex motions happening than what you would naïvely guess.
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Why is it important?
Even in a relatively simple system like crystalline silicon, there's much going on if you just throw in a few extra atoms (or take out a couple). These complicated processes need to be taken into account, if you're studying the evolution of a silicon crystal that contains these defects (e.g. after radiation damage).
Perspectives
This paper showcases the capabilities of the k-ART code. My contribution to this work was mainly contributing to the simulation code, and helping the first author with his simulations.
Dr Peter Brommer
University of Warwick
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Diffusion of point defects in crystalline silicon using the kinetic activation-relaxation technique method, Physical Review B, June 2015, American Physical Society (APS),
DOI: 10.1103/physrevb.91.224106.
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Contributors
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