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The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium
Thermal equilibrium is reached when the system assumes its lowest energy. This can be hindered by kinetic reasons; however, it is a general assumption that the ground state can be eventually reached. Here, we show that this is not always necessarily the case. Carbon pairs in silicon have at least th...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2023
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9870972/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36690635 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36090-2 |
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author | Deák, Peter Udvarhelyi, Péter Thiering, Gergő Gali, Adam |
author_facet | Deák, Peter Udvarhelyi, Péter Thiering, Gergő Gali, Adam |
author_sort | Deák, Peter |
collection | PubMed |
description | Thermal equilibrium is reached when the system assumes its lowest energy. This can be hindered by kinetic reasons; however, it is a general assumption that the ground state can be eventually reached. Here, we show that this is not always necessarily the case. Carbon pairs in silicon have at least three different configurations, one of them (B-configuration) is the G photoluminescence centre. Experiments revealed a bistable nature with the A-configuration. Electronic structure calculations predicted that the C-configuration is the real ground state; however, no experimental evidence was found for its existence. Our calculations show that the formation of the A- and B-configurations is strongly favoured over the most stable C-configuration which cannot be realized in a detectable amount before the pair dissociates. Our results demonstrate that automatized search for complex defects consisting of only the thermodynamically most stable configurations may overlook key candidates for quantum technology applications. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9870972 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-98709722023-01-25 The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium Deák, Peter Udvarhelyi, Péter Thiering, Gergő Gali, Adam Nat Commun Article Thermal equilibrium is reached when the system assumes its lowest energy. This can be hindered by kinetic reasons; however, it is a general assumption that the ground state can be eventually reached. Here, we show that this is not always necessarily the case. Carbon pairs in silicon have at least three different configurations, one of them (B-configuration) is the G photoluminescence centre. Experiments revealed a bistable nature with the A-configuration. Electronic structure calculations predicted that the C-configuration is the real ground state; however, no experimental evidence was found for its existence. Our calculations show that the formation of the A- and B-configurations is strongly favoured over the most stable C-configuration which cannot be realized in a detectable amount before the pair dissociates. Our results demonstrate that automatized search for complex defects consisting of only the thermodynamically most stable configurations may overlook key candidates for quantum technology applications. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-01-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9870972/ /pubmed/36690635 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36090-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Deák, Peter Udvarhelyi, Péter Thiering, Gergő Gali, Adam The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
title | The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
title_full | The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
title_fullStr | The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
title_full_unstemmed | The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
title_short | The kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
title_sort | kinetics of carbon pair formation in silicon prohibits reaching thermal equilibrium |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9870972/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36690635 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-36090-2 |
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