Study of the damage produced in silicon carbide by high energy heavy ions

Silicon carbide (SiC) single crystals were irradiated at room temperature with different ion species of several hundreds MeV in order to explore a wide range of the deposited electronic and nuclear energy losses. The samples were characterized by optical absorption spectroscopy. The comparison of the transmittance data obtained after irradiation with different ion species in combination with the use of energy degraders of different thicknesses allowed to demonstrate that the optical defects created by swift heavy ions are essentially produced by elastic collisions and occur mainly at the end of the ion range region.