Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Crystallization of Amorphous Silicon

Abstract

Crystal growth process of silicon was studied by molecular dynamics method using the Tersoff-C potential. The newly developed crystallization system that consisted of an amorphous Si cluster on an amorphous surface with a small number of seed atoms was used. With this configuration, the artifacts due to the periodic boundary condition could to completely neglected. From the time profiled of the Si crystal nuclei size, the classical critical nuclei size was estimated to be 50 to 100 atoms and the incubation period became shorter when the seed atoms became larger. The growth velocity of crystallization interface was estimated to be around 23cm/s.