Effect of silicon on the elastic-plastic transition of GaAs crystal

Effect of silicon doping on the elastic-plastic transition of GaAs crystal is demonstrated by results of nanoindentations and ab initio simulations. The experiments show that an increase of silicon concentration causes a decrease of the contact pressure at the onset of permanent deformation of GaAs nanovolume. We found the substitutional Si point defects to decrease the pressure of GaAs-I → GaAs-II phase transformation, which proves the elastic-plastic transition of Si-doped GaAs crystal is a phase-change-driven phenomenon.