Abstract
Total-energy pseudopotential calculations are used to study the cleavage anisotropy in silicon. It is shown that cracks propagate easily on and planes provided crack propagation proceeds in the direction. In contrast, if the crack is driven in a direction on a plane the bond breaking process is discontinuous and associated with pronounced relaxations of the surrounding atoms, which results in a large lattice trapping. The different lattice trapping for different crack propagation directions can explain the experimentally observed cleavage anisotropy in silicon single crystals.
- Received 4 November 1999
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5347
©2000 American Physical Society