Growth of Amorphous Silicon: Low Energy Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Atomic Bombardment

Non-crystalline silicon networks were constructed by atomic deposition and by rapid quenching. The tight-binding molecular dynamics (TBMD) method which had been developed for studying the growth of amorphous carbon structures (Kohary, K., Kugler, S. (2001) “Growth of amorphous carbon: low-energy molecular dynamics (MD) simulation of atomic bombardment,” Phys. Rev. B 63 193404), was applied. During the relaxations the temperature versus time functions display stretched exponential forms. The most important structural properties were analyzed. The final networks contain significant numbers of triangles and squares.