Ion-induced damage accumulation and electron-beam-enhanced recrystallization in SrTiO3

Damage accumulation in strontium titanate (SrTiO3) from 1.0MeV Au irradiation has been investigated at temperatures from 150to400K. The relative disorder on the Sr and Ti sublattices at the damage peak has been determined as a function of local dose and temperature. A disorder accumulation model has been fit to data from this study and from the literature, indicating that defect-stimulated amorphization is the primary amorphization mechanism up to ∼360K. High-dose irradiation at 400K leads to formation of an amorphous surface layer. Analyses of the temperature dependence for amorphization indicate that the amorphization kinetics are consistent with irradiation-enhanced and thermal recovery processes with activation energies of 0.1±0.05eV and 0.7±0.1eV, respectively. Under 200keV electron-beam irradiation, the epitaxial recrystallization rates are orders of magnitude higher than thermal rates, and an activation energy of 0.1±0.05eV is determined for the e-beam enhanced recrystallization processes.