LEED STRUCTURE DETERMINATION OF HEXAGONAL ALPHA-SIC SURFACES

Basal plane surfaces of hexagonal silicon carbide samples of 6H and 4H polytype were investigated by means of low-energy electron diffractio n (LEED). In a first part it is demonstrated by test calculations how diffraction spot intensities are dependent on the stacking sequence of the first few bilayers. It is shown that for an ideally flat sample i t can be determined which specific layer of the hexagonal unit cell te rminates the surface. However, when a statistical mixture of bilayer t erminations is present on the surface, 4H and 6H polytypes yield indis tinguishable intensities. In a second part a surface structure analysi s based on experimental data obtained from two 6H-samples is presented . The surface orientation (polarity) is determined to be (0001) for bo th samples. Different termination morphologies are found which are cle arly distinguishable by LEED. While one of the samples shows a mixed t ermination, the other exhibits a preferential termination with linear stacking of the first three bilayers involving typical step heights of three bilayer spacings or multiples of that. For this sample a refine ment of the structure analysis shows that surface dangling bonds are s aturated by hydroxyl species. Oxygen is found to be in atop position w ith a Si-O bond length of 1.65 Angstrom. The asymmetric bond environme nt of the topmost Si leads to a contraction of the first bilayer (7.5% ). The subsurface geometry is bulk-like.