Surface Evolution of Nano-Textured 4H-SiC Homoepitaxial Layers after High Temperature Treatments: Morphology Characterization and Graphene Growth

Xingfang Liu; Yu Chen; Changzheng Sun; Min Guan; Yang Zhang; Feng Zhang; Guosheng Sun; Yiping Zeng

doi:10.3390/nano5031532

Surface Evolution of Nano-Textured 4H-SiC Homoepitaxial Layers after High Temperature Treatments: Morphology Characterization and Graphene Growth

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2015 Sep 18;5(3):1532-1543. doi: 10.3390/nano5031532.

Authors

Xingfang Liu¹, Yu Chen², Changzheng Sun³, Min Guan⁴, Yang Zhang⁵, Feng Zhang⁶, Guosheng Sun⁷, Yiping Zeng^{5

8}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. liuxf@mail.semi.ac.cn.
² Semiconductor Lighting Technology Research and Development Center, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. chenyu@semi.ac.cn.
³ Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. czsun@tsinghua.edu.cn.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. guanmin@semi.ac.cn.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. zhang_yang@semi.ac.cn.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. fzhang@semi.ac.cn.
⁷ Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. gshsun@semi.ac.cn.
⁸ Semiconductor Lighting Technology Research and Development Center, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China. zhang_yang@semi.ac.cn.

Abstract

Nano-textured 4H-SiC homoepitaxial layers (NSiCLs) were grown on 4H-SiC(0001) substrates using a low pressure chemical vapor deposition technique (LPCVD), and subsequently were subjected to high temperature treatments (HTTs) for investigation of their surface morphology evolution and graphene growth. It was found that continuously distributed nano-scale patterns formed on NSiCLs which were about submicrons in-plane and about 100 nanometers out-of-plane in size. After HTTs under vacuum, pattern sizes reduced, and the sizes of the remains were inversely proportional to the treatment time. Referring to Raman spectra, the establishment of multi-layer graphene (MLG) on NSiCL surfaces was observed. MLG with sp² disorders was obtained from NSiCLs after a high temperature treatment under vacuum at 1700 K for two hours, while MLG without sp² disorders was obtained under Ar atmosphere at 1900 K.

Keywords: 4H–SiC; evolution; graphene; morphology; nano-textured.