SiC Epitaxial Growth by Halo-hydrocarbon Precursor Growth

The epitaxial growth of SiC is limited by two main processes; homogeneous nucleation and surface mobility at high growth rates. We propose to investigate the growth of SiC using three different halo-hydrocarbons and two or three different chlorinated Si chemistries and also combine the most promising carbon and silicon chemistries. The goal from phase I is to suggest a suitable chemistry eliminating homogeneous nucleation and furthermore investigate the lower limits in temperature where significantly higher growth rates (> 20 micrometer/h) can be achieved without deteriorating the crystalline quality. Low temperature growth is believed to greatly reduce the impurities leeching out of the hot graphite susceptor and the quartz. Lower temperature processes giving impeccable crystalline quality are thus essential if high voltage (>10kV) power devices are to be made. Another goal of the phase I effort is to suggest a suitable reactor configuration for improved utilization of the proposed chemistry.