AUGER DEPTH PROFILING AND FACTOR ANALYSIS OF SPUTTER INDUCED ALTERED LAYERS IN SiC

Rastislav Kosiba - Gernot Ecke - Jozef Liday - Juraj Breza - Oliver Ambacher

   The thickness of the altered layer created by ion bombardment of the 6H silicon carbide single crystal was determined by means of Auger depth profiling combined with factor analysis. After pre-bombardment of the surface until the steady state by argon ions with energies 1, 2 and 4keV, the micro profiles of the altered layers were recorded by sputtering with low energy argon ions of 300eV. As the position and shape of the carbon Auger signal depend on the perfection of the crystalline structure, they were used for depth profile evaluation by factor analysis. In this way the depth profiles of the damaged surface region could be estimated in dependence on the ion energy. The thickness of the altered layer of SiC bombarded with keV Ar ions using an incident angle of 80^o was obtained.

Keywords: sputtering, altered layer, AES, depth profiling, implantation, silicon carbide, factor analysis

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