Effect of silicon on the elastic–plastic transition of GaAs crystal

Abstract

Effect of silicon doping on the elastic–plastic transition of GaAs crystal is demonstrated by results of nanoindentations and ab initio simulations. The experiments show that an increase of silicon concentration causes a decrease of the contact pressure at the onset of permanent deformation of GaAs nanovolume. We found the substitutional Si point defects to decrease the pressure of GaAs-I → GaAs-II phase transformation, which proves the elastic–plastic transition of Si-doped GaAs crystal is a phase-change-driven phenomenon.