Vacancy concentrations in binary rare-earth disilicides with the aluminum diboride structure
Abstract
Recent success in growing sub-10-nm rare-earth disilicide nanowires on Si(001) by Chen et al. has stimulated great interest in understanding the point defects in these silicides that may affect their properties. These disilicides exhibiting the AlB2 structure (C32, hP3) have the formula of RESi1.76, suggesting the existence of vacancies on the Si sublattice sites. In the present study, we obtain the vacancy concentrations by simultaneously measuring their lattice parameters and bulk densities. The results show 11.1% vacancies expressed in terms of one mole of RESi2. This means that in a unit cell of nine sites, one of the six sites occupied by the Si atoms is vacant.
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