Monte Carlo simulations of defect recovery within a 10 keV collision cascade in 3C–SiC

A kinetic lattice Monte Carlo (KLMC) model is developed to investigate the recovery and clustering of defects during annealing of a single 10 keV cascade in cubic silicon carbide. The 10 keV Si cascade is produced by molecular dynamics (MD), and a method of transferring the defects created by MD simulations to the KLMC model is developed. The KLMC model parameters are obtained from MD simulations and ab initio calculations of defect migration, recombination, and annihilation. The defects are annealed isothermally from 100 K to 1000 K in the KLMC model. Two distinct recovery stages for close Frenkel pairs are observed at about 200 and 550 K, and the growth of complex clusters is observed above 400 K. These simulation results are in good agreement with available experimental results.