Energy landscape of relaxed amorphous silicon

Francis Valiquette and Normand Mousseau
Phys. Rev. B 68, 125209 – Published 29 September 2003
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Abstract

We analyze the structure of the energy landscape of a well-relaxed 1000-atom model of amorphous silicon using the activation-relaxation technique (ART nouveau). Generating more than 40 000 events starting from a single minimum, we find that activated mechanisms are local in nature, that they are distributed uniformly throughout the model, and that the activation energy is limited by the cost of breaking one bond, independently of the complexity of the mechanism. The overall shape of the activation-energy-barrier distribution is also insensitive to the exact details of the configuration, indicating that well-relaxed configurations see essentially the same environment. These results underscore the localized nature of relaxation in this material.

  • Received 24 January 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.68.125209

©2003 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Francis Valiquette and Normand Mousseau

  • Département de Physique and Centre de Recherche en Physique et Technologie des Couches Minces, Université de Montréal, C.P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec, H3C 3J7, Canada

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Vol. 68, Iss. 12 — 15 September 2003

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