Abstract
Disappearance of the divacancy (V 2) and trivacancy (V 3) complexes upon isochronal and isothermal annealing of electron irradiated Si:O crystals has been studied by means of deep level transient spectroscopy. The annealing studies have shown that the V 2 and V 3 defects are mobile in Si at T>200 °C and in oxygen-rich material are trapped by interstitial oxygen atoms so resulting in the appearance of V 2O and V 3O defects. The activation energies for diffusion of the V 2 and V 3 centers have been determined. Density functional modeling calculations have been carried out to investigate the migration and reorientation mechanisms of V 3 in large silicon supercells. It is proposed that these comprise a sequence of transformations between V 3(D 3) and V 3(C 2v) configurations. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.