**2.1 Sample preparation**

SiC thin films were grown onto Si(111) substrate by radio-frequency (RF) sputtering technique, detailed in our earlier publication [18]. Then, these as-deposited thin film samples were mounted on a substrate holder with the possibility that angle of ion beam incidence could be fixed to 500 with respect to the surface normal. For ion beam sputtering experiments, these samples were irradiated with 80 keV Ar+ ion beam to fluences of 5 × 1017 Ar+ cm−2 and 7 × 1017 Ar+ cm−2 at incident angle of 500 with respect to the surface normal using 200 kV ion accelerator facility available at Ion Beam Center, Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra. The base pressure in the target chamber was 1.2 × 10−6 Torr. The ion current density during irradiation was kept constant at 2.8 μA cm−2 [19].
