An investigation was made here, by means of state-of-the-art first principle techniques, of the effect of impurity segregation upon the energetics, structure and electronic properties of dislocation cores. It was found that for the species considered, Al, P, B and N (the most common dopants in SiC), the impurity-dislocation interaction was attractive and that segregation energies were comparable or larger than dislocations reconstruction energies. As to the doping properties of the impurities they were deactivated by the interaction with the dislocation core environment, with the noticeable exception of P. The results were rationalized in terms of the effect of the dopants upon the dislocation core band structure.

Interaction of Doping Impurities with the 30° Partial Dislocations in SiC - an ab initio Investigation. F.Bernardini, L.Colombo: Physical Review B, 2005, 72[8], 085215 (10pp)