Liquid phase epitaxial growth of 3C-SiC films deposited on Si

In this paper, we present a novel method to grow 3C-SiC crystal in a liquid -phase epitaxy-like manner, but without any substantial substrate. The star ting material to be used in this method is the 3C-SiC-thin film deposited o n Si substrate in a gas-phase heteroepitaxial technology. The free 3C-SiC f ilm which remained of the molten Si substrate epitaxially grows up from the Si solution saturated by SiC in a highly purified graphite crucible heated by an inductive heater. XRD, XPS and Raman spectroscopy were used to chara cterize the samples. The only one peak with full width at half maximum (FWH M) of 0.2 at 2 theta = 35.65 degrees in XRD is attributed to the diffractio n of (111) planes in 3C-SiC. The energy difference between C1s and Si2p bin ding energy in XPS data is 183.2 eV, which is well consistent with the resu lt published before for single crystal 3C-SiC. Although the only sharp and strongest peak at 796.6 cm(-1) in the Raman spectrum also confirms the crys tal structure, the additional broadened weak peak at 523.6 cm(-1) may imply the existence of some lattice defects related to nitrogen unintentionally introduced in the growth process. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.