Position Dependent Growth of Polycrystalline Cubic-SiC Film in a Cold-Wall Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Vapour Deposition Reactor

Abstract

In this paper, position dependent heteroepitaxial growth of polycrystalline cubic-silicon carbide (3C-SiC) film on Si (100) substrate was demonstrated by using hexamethyldisilane (HMDS) as a single source precursor for both Si and C. Hydrogen (H2) and propane (C3H8) were used as a carrier gas and for carbonization, respectively, and a two-step growth process was adopted. The heteroepitaxial growth of cubic-SiC film occurred at 1350 � C via an atmospheric pressure chemical vapour deposition (APCVD) in a horizontal cold-wall quartz tube reactor. The as-grown sample was cut into pieces according to the color of the grown film as observed by the naked eye and their thicknesses were measured using an ellipsometer. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM) were performed to see the surface morphology of the different samples of the grown film, respectively, and to confirm their cubic (3C) symmetry and crystalline nature, the structural and optical characterization were carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and room temperature photoluminescence (RTPL). The position related variation in crystallinity, thickness and quality of the grown film was observed and found to be decreased from upstream end to down-stream end. Hence, the growth of a film depends on the position from up-stream end to down-stream end in a horizontal cold-wall APCVD reactor.