The impact of self-interstitials and strain on the critical size for nucleation of incoherent precipitates was well-known. A factor that was neglected so far was the incorporation of intrinsic point defects of the host matrix in the precipitate itself. It was shown that this could had an important impact both on the critical size and on the precipitated phase. The theoretical results were illustrated for the case of O precipitation in Si. The growing precipitate could also cause the nucleation of extended lattice defects such as dislocations and stacking faults in the surrounding matrix. A model was presented to predict stacking fault nucleation.

Precipitation and Extended Defect Formation in Silicon. J.Vanhellemont, O.De Gryse, P.Clauws: Physica Status Solidi C, 2005, 2[6], 1958-62