Improved β-SiC heteroepitaxial films using off-axis Si substrates

Abstract

All β-SiC films grown using on-axis (001) Si substrates that have been examined with transmission electron microscopy exhibit a high density of interfacial twins, stacking faults, and antiphase disorder. The antiphase boundaries can be decorated by chemical etching, sputter etching, wet oxidation, and β-SiC growth in the presence of diborane. All traces of antiphase disorder are eliminated when the heteroepitaxial growth is carried out on vicinal (001) Si substrates that are tilted 2° about a 〈110〉 axis. In addition, growth on the off-axis Si produces β-SiC films that are significantly smoother than on-axis films. The density of stacking faults is apparently unaffected by growth on the off-axis substrates.

Monte Carlo study of morphological surface instabilities during misoriented epitaxial growth of cubic and hexagonal polytypes

“…Specifically, anti-phase domainfree 3C-SiC films were produced using off-axis (100) Si substrates 2° inclined towards the <110> by Shibahara et al [4]. Powell et al [5] inferred that all the traces of anti-phase disorder were eliminated in 3C-SiC films grown on offaxis substrates. During step-flow growths the step train can undergo several types of morphological changes that affect the quality of the final film and fabricated device.…”

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

“…The calculation was based on an image treatment demonstrated in Figure 3: one domain is saturated in order to numerically calculate the relative surface area it occupies. In these cases, the non-colorized part in every treated image represents the majority domains with Si islands oriented along SiC [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] direction. In these cases, the non-colorized part in every treated image represents the majority domains with Si islands oriented along SiC [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] direction.…”

“…3C-SiC, GaAs) epitaxially grown on {100} face of a substrate having a diamond like structure (ex. Till now there exists three ways to observe the APDs in 3C-SiC epilayers, which are the chemical etching technique [5], the technique based on additional SiC growth [6], and the elongated silicon islands deposition method [7]. The APDs are two neighboring grains with opposite sublattice allocation and separated by an interface (APB) consisting of incorrect atomic bonds, namely, in the case of 3C-SiC, Si-Si and /or C-C bond [2; 3].…”

Controlling the surface roughness of epitaxial SiC on silicon

“…18 Increasing surface roughness is reported to adversely affect the defect density and electron mobility in the GaN and graphene layers on SiC/Si. [19][20][21][22] The improvement of the smoothness of epitaxial SiC on Si films can be pursued at two stages: (1) upon film growth (e.g., by optimizing the growth process and growth surfaces 21,23,24 ); (2) through post-growth processes. 25,26 Among the available post-growth processes, CMP using diamond based slurries is very effective at reducing roughness to a level suitable for device fabrication.…”