Effects of thermal and athermal processing on the formation of buried SiC layers

In the present study, systematic investigations on 100 keV C ion implanted Si (100) substrates annealed subsequently at a temperature of 1000 °C for 2 h or athermally processed using 110 MeV Ni8+ ion irradiation have been performed. A detailed analysis using the techniques of x-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) at high resolutions is performed. The observations suggest the formation of cubic silicon carbide (Β-SiC) crystallites surrounded by an amorphous background in the samples thermally annealed at 1000 °C. However, ion irradiation did not influence the as-implanted layers to any significant extent. Various defects formed after annealing inside C implanted Si such as missing planes, edge dislocations, and grain boundaries during thermal crystallization are visualized through high resolution TEM.