"Ab initio" studies of hydrogen-enhanced oxygen diffusion in silicon

A novel microscopic mechanism for hydrogen-enhanced oxygen diffusion in p-doped silicon is proposed. A path for joint diffusion of O and H is obtained from an ab-initio molecular dynamics "kick" simulation. The migration pathway consists of a two-step mechanism, with a maximum energy of 1.46 eV. This path represents a 0.54 eV reduction in the static barrier when compared with the diffusion of isolated O in Si, in excellent agreement with experiments