Enhanced stability of deuterium in silicon

Tight-binding molecular dynamics has been used to simulate vibrationally excited Si–H and Si–D modes. Simulations find that vibrationally excited Si–D bending modes decay much more rapidly than Si–H bending modes, resulting in SiD bonds having much higher stability than SiH bonds. This provides a viable mechanism for reduced degradation in deuterated metal–oxide–semiconductor transistors and deuterated amorphous silicon devices.