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 x 10(13), 2 x 10(14) x 10(15) ions/cm(2) for Kr-ion and to 3.75 x 10(15) ions/cm(2) for Ne-ion, respectively. The implanted specimens were then thermally annealed, in vacuum at the temperature 500, 700 and 1000 degrees 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. Crown Copyright (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.