Articles you may be interested inGrowth of silicon quantum dots by oxidation of the silicon nanocrystals embedded within silicon carbide matrix AIP Advances 4, 107106 (2014); 10.1063/1.4897378 Growth of silicon nanocrystallites in amorphous silicon carbide thin films by aluminum induced crystallization AIP Conf. Proc. 1536, 161 (2013); 10.1063/1.4810150 Influence of substrate temperature on growth of nanocrystalline silicon carbide by reactive magnetron sputtering J. Appl. Phys. 98, 024313 (2005); 10.1063/1.1985975 Low temperature deposition of nanocrystalline silicon carbide films by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition and their structural and optical characterization J. Appl. Phys. 94, 5252 (2003); 10.1063/1.1609631Polycrystallization and surface erosion of amorphous GaN during elevated temperature ion bombardment Ion beam synthesis using high-fluence carbon ion implantation in silicon in combination with subsequent or in situ thermal annealing has been shown to be able to form nanocrystalline cubic SiC ͑3C-SiC͒ layers in silicon. In this study, a silicon carbide layer was synthesized by 40-keV 12 C + implantation of a p-type ͑100͒ Si wafer at a fluence of 6.5ϫ 10 17 ions/ cm 2 at an elevated temperature. The existence of the implanted carbon in Si substrate was investigated by time-of-flight energy elastic recoil detection analysis. The SiC layer was subsequently irradiated by 10-30 MeV 127 I ions to a very low fluence of 10 12 ions/ cm 2 at temperatures from 80 to 800°C to study the effect on the crystallization of the SiC layer. Infrared spectroscopy and Raman scattering measurement were used to monitor the formation of SiC and detailed information about the SiC film properties was obtained by analyzing the peak shape of the Si-C stretching mode absorption. The change in crystallinity of the synthesized layer was probed by glancing incidence x-ray diffraction measurement and transmission electron microscopy was also used to confirm the results and to model the crystallization process. The results from all these measurements showed in a coherent way that the synthesized structure was a polycrystalline layer with nanometer sized SiC crystals buried in a-Si matrix. The crystallinity of the SiC layer was enhanced by the low-fluence swift heavy ion bombardment and also favored by higher energy, higher fluence, and higher substrate temperature. It is suggested that electronic stopping plays a dominant role in the enhancement.
