Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
Atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition (APCVD) was used to grow silicon carbide (SiC) on as-deposited and annealed polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon) films which were deposited on oxidized Si wafers. X-ray diffraction (XRD) reveals that SiC films grown on asdeposited polysilicon have a (110) orientation. XRD performed on as-deposited polysilicon before and after SiC growth reveals that the orientation of polysilicon changes from (110) to a mixture of (110) and (11) during growth of 2 μm-thick SiC films. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM) images of the SiC/polysilicon interface show that the SiC appears to be unaffected by the recrystallization of the underlying polysilicon during the SiC growth. XRD from samples of SiC grown on annealed polysilicon show that both films have (110) and (111) orientations. For SiC films grown on annealed polysilicon substrates, XTEM images show that the crystallinity of the annealed polysilicon substrate does not significantly change during SiC growth. Furthermore, an investigation of the SiC/annealed-polysilicon interface using selected area diffraction (SAD) shows that an epitaxial relationship exists between the polysilicon and SiC grains.