Detailed study of the influence of surface misorientation on the density of Anti-Phase Boundaries in 3C-SiC layers grown on (001) silicon

Abstract

In this work we investigated the influence of the Si substrate misorientation and 3C-SiC film thickness on the density of Anti-Phase Boundaries, in order to better understand the mechanism of antiphase domain annihilation. The two highlights in our work are the utilization of [001] orientated Si on-axis wafer with spherical dimples, which gave us access to a continuum of off-cut angles (0° to ~11° ) and directions, and the deposition of elongated silicon islands on the surface of 3C-SiC epilayers, which improved the detection of APDs by analysis of Scanning Electron Microscopy images. We found that for a given layer thickness the relative surface occupation of one domain increases with the off-cut angle value, leading to single domain film up to a certain angle. This critical value is reduced as the film is thickened.

Elaboration of Monocrystalline Si Thin Film on 3C-SiC(100)/Si Epilayers by Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition

“…for which differences in sublattice allocation result in a 90° in plane rotation of crystalline directions between one grain and its neighbour, the two diffraction sets on azimuth scans demonstrates the possibility to have four distinct Si grain orientation taking into account 3C-SiC APDs. Moreover, it is well known that APDs density can be reduced or supressed by using off axis Si substrate and/or by growing thick 3C-SiC epilayers [13]. In the present work, the 4°off axis 3C-SiC epilayer over which we have deposited Si film is about 1.5µm thick.…”

Effect of Nitrogen and Aluminum Doping on 3C-SiC Heteroepitaxial Layers Grown on 4° Off-Axis Si (100)

“…In this way, not all the SFs along the plane (−1−11) are suppressed. At the same time, we observed that this cutting direction does not lead to a complete suppression of the APBs (SEM images not reported here), which act as a source and annihilation point for the SFs [ 27 ]. This leads to an increase in the density of the SFs that reach the surface.…”

3C-SiC: New Interest for MEMS Devices

“…Recently, we have studied the influence of surface misorientation on the density of Anti-Phase Boundaries (APB) in 3C-SiC layers grown on silicon, using the method proposed by Ishida [24]. Based on these results, we have investigated, in more details, the growth mechanisms of the silicon islands in order to try to obtain a continuous and monocrystalline silicon layer.…”