A first-principles pseudopotential study of neutral self-interstitial defects in silicon is reported, together with calculations for Pandey’s concerted exchange mechanism for selfdiffusion. The energies and structures of the fully relaxed hexagonal, tetrahedral, split-〈110〉, ‘caged’ (Clark S J and Ackland G J 1997 Phys. Rev. B 56 47), split-〈100〉, and bond-centred interstitials are calculated u...