Study of silver diffusion in silicon carbide

Diffusion of silver in 6H–SiC and polycrystalline CVD-SiC was investigated using α-particle channeling spectroscopy and electron microscopy. Fluences of 2 × 1016 cm−2 of 109Ag+ were implanted with an energy of 360 keV at room temperature, at 350 °C and 600 °C, producing an atomic density of approximately 2% at the projected range of about 110 nm. The broadening of the implantation profile and the loss of silver through the front surface during vacuum annealing at temperatures up to 1600 °C was determined. Fairly strong silver diffusion was observed after an initial 10 h annealing period at 1300 °C in both polycrystalline and single crystalline SiC, which is mainly due to implant induced radiation damage. After further annealing at this temperature no additional diffusion took place in the 6H–SiC samples, while it was considerably reduced in the CVD-SiC. The latter was obviously due to grain boundary diffusion and could be described by the Fick diffusion equation. Isochronal annealing of CVD-SiC up to 1400 °C exhibited an Arrhenius type temperature dependence, from which a frequency factor Do ∼ 4 × 10−12 m2 s−1 and an activation energy Ea ∼ 4 × 10−19 J could be extracted. Annealing of 6H–SiC above 1400 °C shifted the silver profile without any broadening towards the surface, where most of the silver was released at 1600 °C. Electron microscopy revealed that this process was accompanied by significant re-structuring of the surface region. An upper limit of D < 10−21 m2 s−1 was estimated for 6H–SiC at 1300 °C.