Dislocation evolution in 4H-SiC epitaxial layers

4H-SiC commercial wafers and sublimation grown epitaxial layers with a thickness of 100 mum have been studied concerning crystalline structure. The substrates and the epitaxial layers have been separately investigated by high-resolution x-ray diffraction and synchrotron white beam x-ray topography. The results show that the structural quality was improved in the epitaxial layers in the [11 (2) over bar0] and [(1) over bar 100] directions, concerning domain distribution, lattice plane misorientation, mosaicity, and strain, compared with the substrates. Misoriented domains have merged together to form larger domains while the tilt between the domains was reduced, which resulted in nonsplitting in diffraction curves. If the misorientation in the substrate is large, we can only see a slight decrease in the misorientation in the epilayer. At some positions on the substrates block structures (mosaicity) were observed. omega-rocking curves showed smaller full width at half maximum values and more uniform and narrow peaks, while the curvature was almost the same in grown epilayers compared with the corresponding substrates. We show that threading edge dislocations along the c axis in silicon carbide grown crystals transform to deflected dislocations in the epilayer. A formation mechanism for deflected dislocations and supporting facts are presented. We further show that these deflected dislocations are one possible source for the creation of stacking faults that recently has been reported to cause degradation in processed SiC bipolar diodes. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.