Similarity and difference of the impact of ion implantation and thermal oxidation on the lattice structure of 4H-SiC (0001) surface

We investigated the similarities and differences of the impacts of ion implantation and thermal oxidation on the lattice structure of 4H-SiC (0001) surface. Our results showed that both Ar-/O-ion implantations and thermal oxidation induce significant distortion at the 4H-SiC surface. The oxygen-implanted sample resulted in a significant increase of distortion after short-time annealing, indicating the distortion is enhanced by the existence of oxygen. A clear difference of the kinetics of lattice relaxations between Ar-implanted and thermally oxidized 4H-SiC indicates that the distortion introduction mechanism by invading oxygen into the SiC surface is different from the one by Frenkel pairs formation by ion implantations.