Mechanism of the swift heavy ion induced epitaxial recrystallization in predamaged silicon carbide

Abstract

Although silicon carbide has attracted extensive investigations of ion irradiation effects at low energy owing to its potential use in harsh environments, very few works were carried out in the field of ion irradiation at high energy. A recent preliminary study exploring the combination of low and high energy ion irradiation effects in silicon carbide revealed that the damaged layer formed by low energy ion irradiation can undergo an epitaxial recrystallization under subsequent swift heavy ion irradiation. The present paper is devoted to the investigation of the mechanisms at the origin of this phenomenon by performing additional experiments. A detailed analysis of the kinetics of this recrystallization effect demonstrates that the latter cannot be explained by the models proposed for the well-known ion-beam-induced epitaxial crystallization process. Furthermore, it is found that this effect can be accounted for by a mechanism combining the melting within the ion tracks of the amorphous zones through a thermal spike process and their subsequent epitaxial recrystallization initiated from the neighboring crystalline regions wherever the size of the latter surpasses a certain critical value.

A coupled effect of nuclear and electronic energy loss on ion irradiation damage in lithium niobate

“…As mentioned in Section 3., the nuclear and electronic energy loss would become the dominating element during the low and high energy ion irradiation, respectively. In order to understand the coupled or combined effects of the nuclear and electronic energy loss, the low and high energy ion irradiations have been developed to evaluate their effects [5,26,50,51].…”

Raman study of amorphization in nanocrystalline 3C–SiC irradiated with C+ and He+ ions

“…The SRIM database of the stopping powers for 60-keV C + and 18-keV He + ions in SiC is shown in Figure S2. The maximum electronic stopping powers of the incident C + and He + ions are 0.4 and 0.12 keV/nm at SiC surface, which have negligible effects on either damage production [19] or damage recovery [20] in SiC. The samples were cut into pieces of 4 mm × 4 mm in size.…”

Microstructure investigation of damage recovery in SiC by swift heavy ion irradiation

“…For the case of 300‐keV He + ‐ion implantation to a fluence of 5 × 10 16 ions/cm 2 , as can be seen, the maximum displacement damage peak is located at a depth of 900 nm, and the corresponding damage peak is about 1.4 dpa. Due to the implantation temperature of 450°C that is over the critical temperature for ion implantation‐induced amorphization, no amorphous layer was formed in He‐implanted SiC. However, for the case of 2.5‐MeV Fe 10+ ‐ion implantation to a fluence of 1 × 10 16 ions/cm 2 , the maximum displacement damage peak is located at a depth of 1170 nm, and the corresponding damage peak is near 8 dpa.…”