Silicon displacement threshold energy determined by electron paramagnetic resonance and positron annihilation spectroscopy in cubic and hexagonal polytypes of silicon carbide

Both for electronic and nuclear applications, it is of major interest to understand the properties of point defects into silicon carbide (SiC). Low energy electron irradiations are supposed to create primary defects into materials. SiC single crystals have been irradiated with electrons at two beam energies in order to investigate the silicon displacement threshold energy into SiC. This paper presents the characterization of the electron irradiation-induced point defects into both polytypes hexagonal (6H) and cubic (3C) SiC single crystals by using both positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). The nature and the concentration of the generated point defects depend on the energy of the electron beam and the polytype. After an electron irradiation at an energy of 800 keV vSi mono-vacancies and vSi–vC di-vacancies are detected in both 3C and 6H–SiC polytypes. On the contrary, the nature of point defects detected after an electron irradiation at 190 keV strongly depends on the polytype. Into 6H–SiC crystals, silicon Frenkel pairs vSi–Si are detected whereas only carbon vacancy related defects are detected into 3C–SiC crystals. The difference observed in the distribution of defects detected into the two polytypes can be explained by the different values of the silicon displacement threshold energies for 3C and 6H–SiC. By comparing the calculated theoretical numbers of displaced atoms with the defects numbers measured using EPR, the silicon displacement threshold energy has been estimated to be slightly lower than 20 eV in the 6H polytype and close to 25 eV in the 3C polytype.