Amorphization of 6H-SiC with 200 keV Ge+ ions at room temperature and subsequent ion-beam-induced epitaxial crystallization (IBIEC) with 300 keV Si+ ions at 480 °C have been studied by Rutherford backscattering spectrometry/channeling and transmission electron microscopy analysis. Experimental results on amorphous layer thicknesses have been compared with trim calculations in association with the critical energy density model. Density changes during amorphization have been observed by step height measurements. Particular attention has been directed to the crystal quality and a possible polytype transformation during the IBIEC regrowth. The IBIEC process consists of two stages and results in a multilayer structure. In the initial phase an epitaxial growth of 6H-SiC has been obtained. With increasing IBIEC dose the epitaxial growth changes to columnar growth and is stopped by polycrystallization of 3C polytype in the near-surface region.

This paper describes the development of a thermal model for flash lamp processing of 3C-SiC on silicon substrates in the millisecond regime, the FLASiC process. The model is a numerical solution of the enthalpy equation, using a modified implicit Crank-Nicholson scheme to combine accurate prediction of melt depths with reasonable computation times. The model has been calibrated against experiments and then used to compute the temperature distribution in the wafer during annealing. The results show the time and extent of melting as a function of layer thickness, wafer preheat temperature, and pulse intensity and duration. The kinetics of melting and regrowth have also been considered.

The density of amorphous SiC layers formed by 2 MeV Si+ implantation into single-crystalline 6H–SiC was measured by x-ray reflectometry and compared with the results of step height measurements. Reactive ion etching was used to investigate the density as a function of depth. The density of the as-amorphized SiC is about 12% less than that of the crystalline material. Within experimental accuracy, the density reduction is homogeneous across the whole layer thickness. Low-temperature annealing leads to the formation of relaxed amorphous SiC with a density about 7% below the crystalline one. These large density changes are in contrast to results in amorphous Si. They can be explained by the high atomic density of SiC and the chemical disorder in the amorphous state of SiC.

Shallow n+ layers in Ge are formed by phosphorus implantation and subsequent millisecond flash lamp annealing. Present investigations are focused on the dependence of P redistribution, diffusion and electrical activation on heat input into the sample and flash duration. In contrast to conventional annealing procedures an activation up to 6.5× 1019 cm-3 is achieved without any dopant redistribution and noticeable diffusion. Present results suggest that independently of pretreatment the maximum activation should be obtained at a flash energy that corresponds to the onset of P diffusion. The deactivation of P is explained qualitatively by mass action analysis which takes into account the formation of phosphorus-vacancy clusters

Transmission electron microscopy was used to investigate B11, C12, N14, Al27, Si28, and Ar37 ion-implanted 4H-SiC epilayers and subsequent defect formation after high temperature annealing. During the annealing process extrinsic dislocation loops of interstitial type are formed on the SiC basal plane with a depth distribution roughly corresponding to the distribution of the implanted ions. The investigation reveals that in samples where the implanted ions are substituting for a position in the silicon sublattice, generating an excess of interstitial silicon, the dislocation loops are more readily formed than in a sample implanted with an ion substituting for carbon.