Aluminum nitride/silicon carbide multilayer heterostructure produced by plasma-assisted, gas-source molecular beam epitaxy

Pseudomorphic structures containing β(3C)-SiC and 2H-AlN have been grown on vicinal α(6H)-SiC(0001) at 1050°C by plasma-assisted, gas-source molecular beam epitaxy. Reflection-high energy electron diffraction and cross-sectional high-resolution transmission electron microscopy showed all layers to be monocrystalline. The AlN layers were uniform in thickness. Defects in these layers initiated at steps on the 6H-SiC film. The 3C-SiC layers contained a high density of stacking faults and microtwins caused primarily by the interfacial stresses generated by the mismatch in lattice parameters between AlN and β-SiC coupled with the very low stacking fault energy of SiC. This is the first report of the deposition of single crystal SiC/AlN/SiC thin film heterostructures on any substrate as well as the first report of the epitaxial growth of single crystal layers of binary materials with three different crystal structures.