Structural and compositional complexity of nitrogen implantation in silicon carbide

Abstract

We present a study of the nitrogen-implanted SiC, with the focus being to understand the structure and composition of the implanted region and its evolution with annealing. The implantation region was probed as a function of implant and annealing conditions using a combination of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) based imaging and spectroscopy techniques as well as Raman spectroscopy. Raman spectroscopy revealed carbon bands at ∼1600 cm−1 and 1370 cm−1 and silicon nitride bands at ∼460 cm−1 and 790 cm−1 for the samples processed at high temperatures. TEM showed that nitrogen ion implantation of the silicon carbide followed by thermal annealing creates complicated nanocomposite structure..