ABSTRACTOur present knowledge on self-interstitials in silicon and the rôle these defects play under widely different experimental conditions are surveyed. In particular, the following phenomena involving self-interstitials either in supersaturations or under high-temperature thermal-equilibrium conditions are considered: mobility-enhanced diffusion of self-interstitials below liquid-helium temperature, thermally activated diffusion of self-interstitials at inter-mediate temperatures (14O K to 600 K), concentration-enhanced diffusion of Group-III or Group-V elements in silicon at higher temperatures, and— as examples for high-temperature equilibrium phenomena — self-diffusion and diffusion of gold in silicon. This leads to the picture that the self-interstitials in silicon may occur in different electrical charge states and possess dumbbell configurations or are extended over several atomic volumes at intermediate or high temperatures, respectively.
