Study of the growth of fullerene-carbonized epitaxial SiC thin films by synchrotron radiation

Thin SiC films have been deposited on silicon(001) substrates by fullerene-carbonization. Using synchrotron radiation X-ray diffraction pole figure measurements have been employed in order to study the texture of the layers. It is qualitatively shown that the films contain epitaxially aligned beta-SiC crystallites with the same orientation as the underlying substrate and their twins of first and second order. The orientational spread of the epitaxial crystallites in terms of tilt against and rotation around the substrate normal is smaller than 3 degrees. The formation of twins as a growth defect plays a major role which is even more pronounced at a higher substrate temperature. Furthermore, an additional preferred orientation has been identified which can only be explained by a non-cubic SiC phase. The portion of these crystallites in the film can be considerably reduced by an increase of the deposition temperature.