SiC SURFACE RECONSTRUCTION: RELEVANCY OF ATOMIC STRUCTURE FOR GROWTH TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Growth of SiC wafer material, of heterostructures with alternating SiC crystal modifications (polytypes), and of oxide layers on SiC are of importance for potential electronic device applications. By investigation of hexagonal SiC surfaces the importance of atomic surface structure for control of the respective growth processes involved is elucidated. Different reconstruction phases prepared by ex situ hydrogen treatment or by Si deposition and annealing in vacuum were analyzed using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and low-energy electron diffraction (LEED) crystallography. The extremely efficient dangling bond saturation of the SiC(0001)-(3×3) phase allows step flow growth for monocrystalline homoepitaxial layers. A switch to cubic layer stacking can be induced on hexagonal SiC(0001) samples when a [Formula: see text] phase is prepared. This might serve as seed for polytype heterostructures. Finally, we succeeded in preparing an epitaxially well matching silicon oxide monolayer with [Formula: see text] periodicity on both SiC(0001) and SiC[Formula: see text]. This initial layer promises to facilitate low defect density oxide films for MOS devices.