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 investigated for a wide range of ion species (from H to Au2) using in situ ion-channeling methods. Silicon carbide is readily amorphized below room temperature with all ions. The rate of ion-beam-induced disordering decreases with decreasing ion mass and with increasing temperature. Analysis of limited data suggests that the activation energy for dynamic recovery during irradiation below 300 K is on the order of 0.1 eV. Thermal annealing indicates similar three-stage recovery on both the Si and C sublattices, which suggests similar 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)