Effects of electronic energy deposition on pre-existing defects in 6H-SiC

Abstract Silicon carbide is widely used in radiation environments due to its excellent properties. However, when exposed to the strong radiation environment constantly, plenty of defects are generated, thus causing the material performance downgrades or failures. In this paper, the two-temperature model (2T-MD) is used to explore the defect recovery process by applying the electronic energy loss (Se) on the pre-damaged system. The effects of defect concentration and the applied electronic energy loss on the defect recovery process are investigated, respectively. The results demonstrate that almost no defect recovery takes place until the defect density in the damage region or the local defect density is large enough, and the probability of defect recovery increases with the defect concentration. Additionally, the results indicate that the defect recovery induced by swift heavy ions is mainly connected with the homogeneous recombination of the carbon defects, while the probability of heterogeneous recombination is mainly dependent on the silicon defects.