Meyer Neldel rule application to silicon supersaturated with transition metals

This paper presents the results for the transverse conductance across a bilayer formed by supersaturating with diverse transition metals a thin layer of a silicon wafer. The layer is formed by ion implantation and annealed by pulsed laser melting. The transverse conductance is exponentially activated, obtaining values ranging from 0.018 to 0.7 eV for the activation energy and pre-exponential factors of 10⁻²–10¹² S depending on the annealing energy density. A semi-logarithmic plot of the pre-exponential factor versus activation energy shows an almost perfect linear behaviour as stated by the Meyer Neldel rule. The Meyer Neldel energy obtained for implantation with different transition metals and also annealed in different conditions is 22 meV, which is within the range of silicon phonons, thus confirming the hypothesis of the multi excitation entropy theory. (paper)