Fe-implanted 6H-SiC Study at fine scale: Elaboration of diluted magnetic semiconductors at room temperature

This PhD thesis focuses on the study of SiC, doped with Fe in order to elaborate a diluted magnetic semiconductor at room temperature for spintronic applications. The iron doping was carried out by ion implantation of multi-energy type (30-160 keV) at different fluences, leading to a 2% constant atomic concentration between 20 to 100 nm, followed by a high temperature annealing in the goal of homogenizing the dopant concentration. The implantation temperature during this process is 550 deg. C, in order to avoid amorphization. The optimization of the magnetic and electronic properties of SiC-Fe, as well as the understanding of the physical mechanisms at the origin of induced magnetism, require a thorough characterization of the microstructure of the implanted materials. The objectives of this work are, on the one hand, to carry out an atomic scale study of the nanostructure according to the implantation conditions (temperature, fluence) and the post-implantation annealing and the other hand, to characterize the magnetic properties of implanted materials. In this work, we have shown by atom probe tomographic, the existence of nanoparticles whose the average size increases with the annealing temperature. The chemical mapping of the nanoparticles shows the presence of the Fe-rich phases for the annealed samples. Magnetic study (Moessbauer spectrometry and Squid) shows the ferromagnetic contribution is due to the magnetic nanoparticles and/or the diluted Fe atoms in the matrix. The correlation between structural and magnetic properties allowed showing that diluted Fe atoms and substitute to Si sites contribute to the ferromagnetic contribution below 300 K. In coupling many characterization techniques in order to give a detailed description of the different studied samples, we have shown that the size and nature of the phase present in the nanoparticles depend on the implantation conditions and the annealing temperatures and consequently it is necessary to anneal our samples at high temperature to reveal ferromagnetic order. (author)