Damage formation and recovery in Fe implanted 6H–SiC

Silicon carbide doped with magnetic ions such as Fe, Mn, Ni or Co could make this wide band gap semiconductor part of the diluted magnetic semiconductor family. In this study, we report the implantation of 6H-SiC single crystals with magnetic $^{56}$Fe$^{+}$ ions with an energy of 150 keV. The samples were implanted with 5E14 Fe$^+$/cm$^{2}$ and 1E16 Fe$^+$/cm$^{2}$ at different temperatures to study the damage formation and lattice site location. The samples were subsequently annealed up to 1500°C in vacuum in order to remove the implantation damage. The effect of the annealing was followed by Rutherford Backscattering/Channeling (RBS/C) measurements. The results show that samples implanted above the critical amorphization temperature reveal a high fraction of Fe incorporated into regular sites along the [0001] axis. After the annealing at 1000°C, a maximum fraction of 75%, corresponding to a total of 3.8E14 Fe$^{+}$/cm$^{2}$, was measured in regular sites along the [0001] axis. A comparison is made between the observed annealing behavior and the one measured in low fluence (2E13 cm$^{−2}$) $\beta$- emission channeling experiments using the radioactive isotope $^{59}$Fe (t$_{1/2}$ = 45 d), where the sample was implanted at room temperature and the $\beta$- emission channeling yield was measured by means of a position-sensitive detector.