Gold nanoclusters formation in silicon carbide using ion implantation

We formed gold nanoclusters in 6H, high-resistivity (1 × 10⁴ Ω·cm) silicon carbide (SiC) by ion implantation at 2 MeV and subsequent annealing. Implantation in SiC is known to form crystal lattice defects and amorphization, segregation and lattice relaxation. Annealing causes the implanted gold to diffuse to these defects where they form nanoclusters. We used gold ion fluences between 5 × 10¹⁵ and 5 × 10¹⁶ cm^-2, and a substrate temperature of 500°C. The annealing was performed in argon at 700°C, 900°C, 1100°C, 1300°C, 1500°C and 1700°C. After each step, we used Fourier Transform Infra Red spectroscopy (FTIR), Optical Absorption spectroscopy (OA) and Micro-Raman (MR) techniques to characterize the conditions for nanocluster formation and their size in the SiC structure, and observe the lattice defects evolution.