Pseudomorphic growth of ultrathin cubic 3C-SiC films on Si(100) by temperature programmed organometallic chemical vapor deposition

The large lattice mismatch between 3C-SiC and silicon of about 20% is reduced to only less than or equal to 0.4% when the commensurability of five 3C-SiC to four Si lattice planes with one misfit dislocation parallel to the film/substrate interface can be utilized for the pseudomorphic growth. We report on a successful preparation of several nanometer thin pseudomorphic films and some of their structural properties. We further show that the formation of voids in the silicon substrate due to Si evaporation, which is one of the important reasons for structural imperfections of heteroepitaxial 3C-SiC films, can be strongly suppressed by our recently developed deposition technique. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-8979(99)03805-0].