A reinterpretation of platinum-diffusion experiments

Platinum diffusion experiments were used in the past to establishestimates for the equilibrium concentration of vacancies in silicon.Such values published by Zimmermann et al. are orders of magnitudeslarger than estimated recently by us and others. A reinterpretationof the original data of Zimmermann et al. resulted in the conclusionthat it is not possible to use them to establish unambiguously valuesfor the equilibrium concentration or for the diffusion coefficient ofvacancies in silicon.