Kinetics of Silicon field evaporation

The theory of field evaporation, previously developed for metals and adsorbates, is applied to semiconductors and insulators, specifically Si. Potential energy curves and evaporation field strengths of Si6 and Si7 are calculated with density functional theory. The evaporation field strength is found to be proportional to the coordination. Good agreement with experimental results is obtained for Silicon as well as an estimate of the experimental field strength.