Production and annealing behavior of lattice damage in energetic Kr and Ne-ion implanted 6H–SiC

In the present work, specimens of 6H–SiC were implanted with 5 MeV krypton ions and 2.3 MeV neon ions, to increasing fluences of 5 × 1013, 2 × 1014, 1 × 1015 ions/cm2 for Kr-ion and to 3.75 × 1015 ions/cm2 for Ne-ion, respectively. The implanted specimens were then thermally annealed, in vacuum at the temperature 500, 700 and 1000 °C, respectively. In addition to the measurements with nanoindentation, XRD in our previous work [1], an investigation of the microstructures by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) was carried out. The microstructures were observed to be dominated by simple defects, planar defects and crystal amorphization under different implantation dose. Recrystallization of the buried amorphous layer was observed after thermal annealing. Mechanisms underlying the changes of microstructures and their correlation with results from HRXRD and nano-indentation measurements are discussed