Localized defects related to the 14N+ ion irradiation-induced magnetism in SiC

The role of localized defects as they pertain to ferromagnetism in SiC, which contains only s and p electrons, is important but unclear. Here, room temperature, macroscopic magnetization is induced and can be tuned in 6H-SiC using 14N+ ion implantation. First-principles density functional theory computation results confirm that 14N+ ion implantation can enhance the ferromagnetic ordering of the local magnetic moments caused by vacancy and substitution defects. The calculated magnetization values in the energetically favored ferromagnetic ordering (1.47-2.93 emu/g for several vacancy and substitution defects) are larger than our experimental values (0.25 emu/g at 5 K and 0.08 emu/g at 300 K), but the result is qualitatively in agreement.