Electric-field-induced transport of protons in amorphous SiO2 -: art. no. 233406

The temperature and time dependence of electric-field-induced motion of thermally generated protons in 20 nm amorphous SiO2 films has been investigated The short-time behavior is found to involve an activation energy of similar to0.38 eV and a hopping distance of similar to0.55 nm. The activation energy is considerably smaller than that found for radiation-generated proton motion (similar to0.82 eV). The hopping distance is consistent with transport involving motion between a bridging oxygen atom and a next-nearest-neighbor (or farther) bridging oxygen atom; this suggests that motion is primarily via cross-ring hopping.