Ab initiomolecular dynamics simulation of self-interstitial diffusion in silicon

Abstract
Diffusion of the self-interstitial in silicon plays an important role in front-end processes for integrated circuit fabrication. We have studied the diffusion of this defect by means of ab initio molecular dynamics simulation. From results at seven temperatures in the range from 700°Cto1200°C, we calculated the diffusion coefficient and the tracer correlation factor for self-diffusion as a function of temperature. By fitting to an Arrhenius curve, we calculated the migration energy and the prefactor. In addition, we present a method for extracting comprehensive quantitative information about defect configurations and migration mechanisms from molecular dynamics simulations. With this method we determined the most frequent configurations and migration mechanisms.