A Rutherford backscattering study of Ar- and Xe-implanted silicon carbide

Hexagonal SiC single crystals (oriented <0001>) were implanted with Ar and Xe ions (energies: 50 to 300 keV, fluences: 5x1013 to 1016 ions/cm2) at 300 K. Rutherford backscattering (RBS) of 4He+ ions was used in combination with ion channeling to measure the implantation and damage profiles and to study the nature, dose dependence and annealing behaviour of the resulting defects. Reasonable agreement is found between the ion ranges and damage distributions and the predictions of TRIM. Full amorphization sets in (starting at the damage peak) at fluences of 8x1014 Ar ions/cm2 and 4x1014 Xe ions/cm2 (for 100 keV ions). Lightly damaged samples show pronounced annealing stages at 290 and 530degC while heavily damaged samples exhibit little recovery up to 1300degC. As dechanneling measurements on samples with little damage show, the defects appear to be present mostly in small clusters. (orig.)