Lateral alignment of SiC dots on Si

Abstract

An alignment of self-assembled SiC dots grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Si substrates is demonstrated. Atomic force microscopy was applied showing the possibility to control the lateral ordering in linear chains and in dense dot arrays. The large lattice mismatch between Si and SiC of 20% stimulates a three-dimensional nucleation on the substrate. The formation of well ordered monoatomic, and biatomic steps as well as step bands on (100) and (111) Si was used, offering the advantage to not need additional processing steps to define the alignment. However, during the SiC nucleation on Si the substrate participates in the reaction to SiC by lateral Si diffusion resulting in an unstable surface during the growth. Thus, the reproducible control of the nucleation sites independent on the movement of the steps during the growth is a critical issue to achieve the lateral alignment.

Fused silica ‘glass grass’: fabrication and utilization

“…Examples for self-organization in additive bottom-up processes are the generation of silicon nano-dots on silicon dioxide substrate (diameter of 5-10 nm, density up to 4 × 10 11 cm −1 ) [16], silicon carbide nano-dots on silicon substrate [17] shown in figure 2 and silicon nanowires [18,19] by a deposition method of self-organized CVD or LPCVD techniques.…”

“…In the recent years, glass structuring by bottom-up methods was realized in the generating of dots, nanotubes [17], porous [21], rough [22] and wave-like structures [23].…”

Dots Formation by CVD in the SiC-Si Hetero-System

“…Like for Si dots case, it is rather difficult to compare the present results on SiC dots with the ones obtained elsewhere. Indeed, only few of them concern the reaction of a C source on the heated Si surface [2,4] and, in these few cases, the growth was always performed by MBE using a solid C source. Though the results obtained in both MBE and CVD cases suggest that the growth mode is obviously the same (Volmer-Veber), one can assume that with MBE the sticking coefficient of C impinging atoms is unity.…”

“…Furthermore, SiC dots on a Si surface, randomly distributed or organized on a tailored pattern, can also be attracting for nanoheterostructure and tunneling devices or even to serve as seed for nanowire growth. Concerning the SiC-Si heterosystem, the dots deposition is usually performed under vacuum with solid Si and C sources [1][2][3][4]. In the present study, CVD was used to investigate the formation of dots in the SiC-Si hetero-system in the two possible ways : SiC dots on Si substrate and Si dots on SiC substrate, with the aim of aligning them along the step edges.…”

Computer Simulation of the Early Stages of Nano Scale SiC Growth on Si

“…The simplest method to create nanoscale SiC is the interaction of C containing species with Si surfaces [1][2][3]. This conversion process is a multistep process [1].…”