Liquid-Liquid Phase Transition in Supercooled Silicon

Abstract

We present a review on the study of metastable silicon, primarily focusing mainly on the aspects of liquid-liquid transition, critical point and phase behaviour, structural and dynamic properties of liquid phase as well as crystal nucleation. We begin with an extensive survey of the investigations of liquid silicon pursued over three decades, with salient experimental, theoretical and simulation results. Following which we present various scenarios put forward to rationalize the density and related anomalies often observed in water and other network forming liquids. After which we present the more recent investigations (both simulation and experimental works) of the phase behavior of Silicon. Since a significant part of metastable silicon work is on a classical empirical potential an important question to address is the reliability of this potential in describing the behavior of silicon. To provide a critical assessment of the applicability of classical simulation results to real silicon we present a comparison of the structural, dynamical, and thermodynamic quantities obtained from the SW potential with those from ab initio simulations and with available experimental data. We also discuss the sensitivity of the thermodynamic properties to model parameters.