Surfactant-mediated MBE growth of β-SiC on Si substrates

A new approach for overcoming the problems of the heteroepitaxial β-SiC growth on Si substrates is hereby proposed. Namely, the surfactant effect is investigated by using Ge as adsorbate. The better control of the Si-surface conversion to SiC is targeted (conversion process). A structure is proposed taking into account eventual incorporation of the Ge in the SiC lattice. The growth experiments towards the proposed structure were performed by solid source MBE and the grown samples were ex-situ characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM). In all cases, a clear difference between samples grown with and without the Ge adsorbate layer is observed.