Buckminsterfullerene (C 60) is a molecule fully formed of carbon that can be used, owing to its electronic and mechanical properties, as "clean" precursor for the growth of carbonbased materials, ranging from π-conjugated systems (graphenes) to synthesized species, e.g., carbides such as silicon carbide (SiC). To this goal, C 60 cage rupture is the main physical process that triggers material growth. Cage breaking can be obtained either thermally by heating up the substrate to high temperatures (630°C), after C 60 physisorption, or kinetically by using supersonic molecular beam epitaxy techniques. In this work, aiming at demonstrating the growth of SiC thin films by C 60 supersonic beams, we present the experimental investigation of C 60 impacts on Si(111) 7 × 7 kept at 500°C for translational kinetic energies (KEs) ranging from 18 to 30 eV. The attained kinetically activated synthesis of SiC submonolayer films is probed by in situ surface electron spectroscopies (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy). Furthermore, in these experimental conditions, the C 60-Si(111) 7 × 7 collision has been studied by computer simulations based on a tight-binding approximation to density-functional theory. Our theoretical and experimental findings point toward a kinetically driven growth of SiC on Si, where C 60 precursor KE plays a crucial role, while temperature is relevant only after cage rupture to enhance Si and carbon reactivity. In particular, we observe a counterintuitive effect in which for low KE (below 22 eV), C 60 bounces back without breaking more effectively at high temperature due to energy transfer from excited phonons. At higher KE (22 < K < 30 eV), for which cage rupture occurs, temperature enhances reactivity without playing a major role in the cage break. These results are in good agreement with ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Supersonic molecular beam epitaxy is thus a technique able to drive material growth at low-temperature regime.