Void formation in melt-grown silicon studied by molecular dynamics simulations: From grown-in faulted dislocation loops to vacancy clusters.

Molecular dynamics simulations of a dislocation based mechanism for void formation in silicon are presented. By studying a moving solid-liquid interface in Si, we observe the formation of dislocation loops on (111) facets consisting of coherency and anticoherency dislocations, which disband within nanoseconds into vacancy clusters of 10 or more vacancies. These vacancy clusters can act as nucleation seeds for the experimentally observed octahedral single and double voids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]