Detailed study of the influence of surface misorientation on the density of Anti‐Phase Boundaries in 3C‐SiC layers grown on (001) silicon

In this work we investigated the influence of the Si substrate misorientation and 3C‐SiC film thickness on the density of Anti‐Phase Boundaries, in order to better understand the mechanism of antiphase domain annihilation. The two highlights in our work are the utilization of [001] orientated Si on‐axis wafer with spherical dimples, which gave us access to a continuum of off‐cut angles (0° to ∼11°) and directions, and the deposition of elongated silicon islands on the surface of 3C‐SiC epilayers, which improved the detection of APDs by analysis of Scanning Electron Microscopy images. We found that for a given layer thickness the relative surface occupation of one domain increases with the off‐cut angle value, leading to single domain film up to a certain angle. This critical value is reduced as the film is thickened.