EPR identification of two types of carbon vacancies in 4H-SiC -: art. no. 121201

The EI5 and EI6 centers are typical intrinsic defects in radiation-damaged and semi-insulating 4H-SiC. So far, their origins have been assigned to positively charged carbon vacancies (V-c(+)) and silicon antisites (Si-c(+)), respectively. However, our complete set of Si-29 hyperfine (HF) data clearly reveals that both the centers should originate from V-c(+) but their locations are different, i.e., quasicubic sites for EI5 and hexagonal sites for EI6, as recently predicted by the first-principle calculation [M. Bockstedte et al., Phys. Rev. B 67, 193102 (2003)]. The two types of V-c(+) centers showed remarkable differences in their atomic structures as well as in the temperature dependence of HF interactions, which are closely related to the nature of the two sites.