Fitting the Stillinger-Weber potential to amorphous silicon

Modifications are proposed to the Stillinger-Weber (SW) potential, an empir ical interaction potential for silicon. The modifications are specifically intended to improve the description of the amorphous phase and are obtained by a direct fit to the amorphous structure. The potential is adjusted to r eproduce the location of the transverse optic (TO) and transverse acoustic (TA) peaks of the vibrational density of states (VDOS), properties insensit ive to the details of e experimental preparation. These modifications also lead to excellent agreement with structural properties. Comparison with oth er empirical potentials shows that amorphous silicon configurations generat ed with the modified potential have overall better vibrational and structur al properties, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.