Abstract:
At ion energies with inelastic stopping powers less than a few keV/nm, radiation damage is thought
to be due to atomic displacements by elastic collisions only. However, it is well known that inelastic
processes and non-linear effects due to defect interaction within collision cascades can significantly
increase or decrease damage efficiencies. The importance of these processes changes significantly
along the ion trajectory and becomes negligible at some distance beyond the projected range, where
damage is mainly caused by slowly moving secondary recoils. Hence, in this region amorphization
energies should become independent of the ion type and only reflect the properties of the target lattice.
To investigate this, damage profiles were obtained from α-particle channeling spectra of 6HSiC
wafers implanted at room temperature with ions in the mass range 84 ≤ M ≤ 133, employing the
computer code DICADA. An average amorphization dose of (0.7 ± 0.2) dpa and critical damage energy
of (17 ± 6) eV/atom are obtained from TRIM simulations at the experimentally observed
boundary positions of the amorphous zones.
