Surface morphology of Ge‐modified 3C‐SiC/Si films

Abstract

The influence of Ge deposition prior to carbon interaction with 3• off-axis Si(111) substrates on the structural and morphological properties of the formed silicon carbide (SiC) layer is studied. In situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) revealed the formation of the cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) modification. In situ spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements revealed a decreasing 3C-SiC thickness with increasing Ge predeposition. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies revealed that the surface overlayer morphology is mainly formed by periodic step arrangements whose relevant geometric parameters, i.e. lateral separation, height and terrace width, depend on the Ge content. Besides the changes of the step morphology, the surface roughness and the grain size and the strain of the formed 3C-SiC decreases with increasing germanium precoverage.

Designing the Si(100) conversion into SiC(100) by Ge

“…Article characteristic features which can be related to step bunching as observed in [8] on Si(111) substrates. A typical AFM pattern is shown in the insert of Fig.…”

“…For Si(111) substrates a positive effect of Ge on the surface morphology of the SiC layers was proven which is related to modified nucleation conditions at the carbonization stage, i.e. the conversion of Si(111) into 3C-SiC(111), prior to epitaxial growth of 3C-SiC [7,8]. The different behaviour of Si(100) substrates concerning the stress relaxation of the 3C-SiC layers by Ge pre-treatment arose the question whether or not this is caused by differrences in the conversion mechanism compared to Si(111) substrates.…”

Properties of surface and interface structure of AlN/3C–SiC/Ge/Si (111) heterostructure

“…Before the AlN deposition, these samples were studied in Ref. [21]. The AlN layers were grown on the mentioned samples of Ref.…”

“…The AlN layers were grown on the mentioned samples of Ref. [21] in the nitride growth chamber. The 2H-AlN layers were grown on the carbonised silicon substrates at 720 1C by plasma-induced MBE with conventional effusion cells for group-III elements and a radio-frequency N 2 plasma source (Oxford Applied Research MDP21) on in situ prepared SiC/Ge/Si templates.…”

“…In the case of AlN/SiC, the atomic arrangement at the interface should determine the stable growth configurations, the 3C-SiC surfaces of the studied samples were discussed in Ref. [21].…”