ENHANCED STABILITY OF DEUTERIUM IN SILICON

Tight-binding molecular dynamics has been used to simulate vibrational ly excited Si-H and Si-D modes. Simulations find that vibrationally ex cited Si-D bending modes decay much more rapidly than SI-H bending mod es, re-suiting in SiD bonds having much higher stability than SiH bond s. This provides a viable mechanism for reduced degradation in deutera ted metal-oxide-semiconductor transistors and deuterated amorphous sil icon devices. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.