Stacking Fault Duplication in 6H-SiC Single Crystal

Abstract

6H-SiC single crystal was grown by physical vapor transport (PVT). The duplications of several types of stacking fault (SF) such as SF<24>, SF<15>, and SF<3111> were observed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). First-principle calculations revealed that the formation energies of single SF<24> and SF<15> are very low while that of SF<3111> is much higher. Further calculations demonstrated that the continuous SFs possessed larger stress along the c-axis than the separated SFs. This suggests that the stress should be the reason for the SF duplication, and the SF can be duplicated under higher c-axis stress.