Enhanced annealing of damage in ion-implanted 4H-SiC by MeV ion-beam irradiation

The effect of ion-beam annealing for implantation-induced damage in single-crystalline 4H silicon carbide has been studied. Four sets of samples, implanted with two types of ions (C or Si) and two different damage levels (complete or incomplete amorphization), were prepared to investigate the influence of damaging conditions. The damaged samples were irradiated with a 3-MeV Ge ion beam at 600 °C in the range of 1×1015–2×1016cm−2 to induce the ion-beam annealing. Some of the damaged samples were thermally annealed without the Ge irradiation to evaluate pure thermal effects. Rutherford backscattering/channeling for these samples revealed substantial enhancements of damage annealing under the MeV ion-beam irradiation. The enhanced annealing effect was stronger for the incompletely amorphized samples than for the completely amorphized samples. For both cases, the annealing effects almost saturated with increasing ion fluence. The results suggest the competition between the annealing and damaging effects induced by the annealing beam, at least, for the incompletely amorphized samples.