Theoretical study of dislocation nucleation from simple surface defects in semiconductors

Abstract

Large-scale atomistic calculations, using empirical potentials for modeling semiconductors, have been performed on a stressed system with linear surface defects like steps. Although the elastic limits of systems with surface defects remain close to the theoretical strength, the results show that these defects weaken the atomic structure, initializing plastic deformations, in particular dislocations. The character of the dislocation nucleated can be predicted considering both the resolved shear stress related to the applied stress orientation and the Peierls stress. At low temperature, only glide events in the shuffle set planes are observed. Then they progressively disappear and are replaced by amorphization/melting zones at a temperature higher than 900 K.

References in corpus (4)

• Environment Dependent Interatomic Potential for Bulk Silicon
• Generalized Stacking Fault Energy Surfaces and Dislocation Properties of Silicon: A First-Principles Theoretical Study
• Comparison between classical potentials and ab initio for silicon under large shear
• Surface step effects on Si (100) under uniaxial tensile stress, by atomistic calculations

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• Glissile dislocations with transient cores in silicon
• In situ TEM study of twin boundary migration in sub-micron Be fibers
• Effects of temperature and surface step on the incipient plasticity in strained aluminium studied by atomistic simulations
• Minimum energy path for the nucleation of misfit dislocations in Ge/Si(001) heteroepitaxy