Silicon carbide (SiC) is mechanically robust, chemically inert, non toxic and biocompatible, so is a good material for application in harsh environment and for biomedical purpose.

3C-SiC layers are commonly prepared by Vapour Phase Epitaxy (VPE) on silicon substrates. Due to the large mismatch between the two materials it is necessary to grow a buffer layer with a carburization of the silicon surface. However, this does not prevent the appearance of a large amount of structural and morphological defects in the film.

In this work we study the growth of 3C-SiC/Si by adding methyltrichlorosilane (MTS) to a standard process for 3C-SiC deposition using SiH₄ and C₃H₈.

A baseline SiC/Si growth process was developed with a carbonization at 1125 °C, addition of SiH₄ and C₃H₈ during the heating from 1125 °C to the thick film growth temperature and finally the deposition of a SiC layer at different temperatures, from 1300 °C to 1400 °C with Si/C ~ 1.4 at 200 mbar.

We investigate how the addition of MTS at different growth temperatures (1300 °C to 1400 °C) affects the SiC layer growth. We varied MTS/SiH₄ ratio from 1/20 to about 1 and we analyzed the samples by means of Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) and ellipsometry to study the structural quality of the films and to compare the results between the standard growth procedure and the one with MTS addition. The film thickness was measured by means of optical reflectivity and the study of the growth rate with and without MTS gives informations about the kinetics of the reactions.

We found that even with a small MTS/SiH₄ ratio of 1/20 in the gas phase is sufficient to increase significantly the growth rate, due to the fact that Cl species binds to Si atoms in the gas phase and prevents the formation of Si condensates. Quality of the film grown with and without MTS, as observed by XRD and TEM, is comparable for small MTS partial pressures but decrease if MTS/SiH₄ is increased to about 1. Surface, as observed by AFM, maintains a smooth  morphology with very low mean square roughness, below 1nm for area of 1x1 mm².

Strain due to lattice and thermal mismatch is common problem in SiC/Si heteroepitaxy and, in order to study how MTS addition affects it we imaged the samples by means of Makyoh, in order to study the substrate bending. Low amount of stress was found.

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