Self-diffusion in amorphous silicon

The present Letter reports on self-diffusion in amorphous silicon. Experiments were done on ^{29}Si/^{nat}Si heterostructures using neutron reflectometry and secondary ion mass spectrometry. The diffusivities follow the Arrhenius law in the temperature range between 550 and 700 °C with an activation energy of (4.4±0.3)  eV. In comparison with single crystalline silicon the diffusivities are tremendously higher by 5 orders of magnitude at about 700 °C, which can be interpreted as the consequence of a high diffusion entropy.