Stacking Fault Duplication in 6H-SiC Single Crystal

6H-SiC single crystal was grown by physical vapor transport (PVT). The duplications of several types of stacking fault (SF) such as SF , SF , and SF were observed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). First-principle calculations revealed that the formation energies of single SF and SF are very low while that of SF 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.