Effects of electronic and nuclear interactions in SiC

In this study, we performed irradiation experiments on nanostructured 3C–SiC samples, with 95 MeV Xe ions at room temperature. This energy permits the observation of the combined electronic and nuclear interactions with matter. The grazing incidence X-ray diffraction results do not reveal a complete amorphization, despite value of displacement per atom overcoming the total amorphization threshold. This may be attributed to competing effects between nuclear and electronic energy loss in this material since a total amorphization induced by nuclear interactions was found after low energy ion irradiation (4 MeV Au). Moreover, electronic interactions created by high energy ion irradiations induce no disorder in single crystalline 6H–SiC. But in samples previously disordered by low energy ion implantation (700 keV I), the electronic interactions generate a strong defects recovery.