The damage produced in silicon carbide single crystals by ion implantation was investigated by Rutherford backscattering channeling and transmission electron microscopy techniques. Implantations were performed at liquid nitrogen and at room temperatures with several ions to examine the effect of the ion mass and of the substrate temperature on the damaging process. The damage accumulation is approximately linear with fluence until amorphization occurs when the elastic energy density deposited by the ions overcomes a critical value. The critical energy density for amorphization depends on the substrate temperature and is greatest at 300 K indicating that defects recombination occurs already at room temperature. Formation of extended defects never occurred and point defects and uncollapsed clusters of point defects were found before amorphization even in the case of light ion implantation. The atomic displacement energy has been estimated to be ∼12 eV/atom from the analysis of the damage process in dilute collision cascades. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.