Influence of electronic stopping on amorphization energies

The effect of electronic stopping on amorphization energies in germanium and silicon carbide is investigated by determining critical damage energies from the boundary positions of buried amorphous layers of carbon implants and relating them to the accompanying inelastic energy densities. Additional results were obtained by re-analyzing previously published results of damage profiles obtained by other workers for different ions in silicon, indium phosphide and gallium arsenide. Results show that electronic stopping reduces damage efficiency in mono-elemental targets, although this effect becomes less important with increasing target mass. Contrary to this, an enhancement of damage efficiency is observed in the lighter two binary targets, while a rather weak reduction is observed in gallium arsenide.