Surface relaxation and photoelectric absorption effects on synchrotron X-ray topographic images of dislocations lying on the basal plane in off-axis 4H-SiC crystals

Highlights: • Sophisticated simulation model is developed to simulate dislocation contrast in off-axis 4H-SiC. • Surface relaxation effects dominate dislocation contrast for diffraction near crystal surface. • Dislocation contrast gradually weakens with increasing depth due to photoelectric absorption. • Depth analysis reveals the contribution of diffracted X-rays from regions below the dislocation. • Burgers vectors of observed dislocations are determined by correlation with simulated images. A more sophisticated simulation model is developed based on the principle of ray-tracing to simulate the grazing-incidence synchrotron X-ray topographic contrast of dislocations lying on the basal plane including basal plane dislocations and deflected threading screw and mixed dislocations in off-axis 4H-SiC crystals. The model incorporates effects of surface relaxation as well as the photoelectric absorption to predict dislocation contrast. Compared to conventional ray-tracing images, surface relaxation effects dominate dislocation contrast for diffraction near the crystal surface. The simulated dislocation contrast gradually weakens with increasing depth of the diffracted beam position within the crystal due to photoelectric absorption. The distinctive features of the net simulated dislocation images obtained by aggregating through the effective penetration depth correlate well with contrast features observed on the experimental topographic images. Depth analysis reveals that in some cases the diffracted X-rays from regions below the dislocation can contribute additional contrast features previously not considered.