Chemical softness and impurity segregation at grain boundaries

We analyze the process of impurity segregation at grain boundaries as a chemical reaction between the impurity and the interface. From this point of view, we test the ability of the concepts of local softness and hardness to predict the most probable sites for impurity accumulation. As a test, an ab initio investigation of the ∑=5 tilt [310] grain boundary in germanium is presented and the energetics of the accumulation of dopant atoms in this interface are studied. Our results support the utility of an analysis in terms of softness for impurity segregation problems.

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