Point defect properties, including diffusivities and equilibrium concentrations for both interstitials and vacancies, are commonly extracted from metal diffusion experiments, and these values are widely used in process simulation software. However, in many cases, these parameter values were extracted using oversimplified models which ignore interactions between interstitial and vacancy diffusion mechanisms. Questions about the accuracy of these parameters have come from ab-initio defect calculations which conclude that vacancies diffuse faster than interstitials, in contrast with published reports on metal diffusion which find vacancies diffuse much more slowly than interstitials. We have reanalyzed published data for zinc and platinum diffusion and find that it is possible to match all of the data using fast vacancy diffusivity. The most direct evidence for slow vacancy diffusion (and a high equilibrium concentration) comes from platinum diffusion experiments. However, we are able to reproduce these results with fast V diffusion and carbon/interstitial clustering, using carbon concentrations typical of Czochralski and float zone silicon (1016cm−3). We evaluate the effectiveness of metal diffusion experiments in determining point defect parameters, and find that it is not possible to reliably determine both diffusivities and equilibrium concentrations for both interstitials and vacancies from metal diffusion results.
Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of vacancy diffusion in nondilute Ni-
X
(
X
= Re, W, Ta) alloys
