The influence of palladium impurities on vacancy diffusion in cubic silicon carbide

Abstract

AbstractThe basic properties of palladium impurities in silicon carbide, such as solubility or diffusion mechanisms, are far from being well understood. In a recent paper I presented a systematic study of stability and kinetic properties of Pd in cubic silicon carbide using first principles calculations. In this paper I focus on the effect of the presence of palladium in silicon carbide, even in very low concentrations, on the kinetic properties of carbon vacancies. I apply a odel of Pd diffusion through a vacancy mechanism on the carbon sublattice and extract the correlation factors leading to an enhancement of vacancy migration, due to the coupling of iffusion fluxes between vacancies and palladium impurities.