Accumulation, dynamic annealing and thermal recovery of ion-beam-induced disorder in silicon carbide

Ion-beam-induced disordering in single crystals of 6H-SiC has been investig ated for a wide range of ion species (from H+ to Au2-) using in situ ion-ch anneling methods. Silicon carbide is readily amorphized below room temperat ure with all ions. The rate of ion-beam-induced disordering decreases with decreasing ion mass and with increasing temperature. Analysis of limited da ta suggests that the activation energy for dynamic recovery during irradiat ion below 300 K is of the order of 0.1 eV. Thermal annealing indicates simi lar three-stage recovery on both the Si and C sublattices, which suggests s imilar recovery processes and activation energies. The activation energies for thermal recovery on the Si sublattice are estimated to be 0.3 +/- 0.15 eV (Stage I), 1.3 +/- 0.25 eV (Stage II) and 1.5 +/- 0.3 eV (Stage III). (C ) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.