White-beam synchrotron topographic studies of defects in 6H-SiC single crystals

Abstract

Synchrotron white-beam X-ray topography studies, in conjunction with Nomarski optical microscopy, have been carried out on 6H-SiC single crystals grown by the sublimation physical vapour transport technique. Two kinds of dislocations were observed using topography: dislocations exhibiting bimodal images of various widths and with line directions approximately parallel to the (0001) axis and dislocations confined to the basal plane, which appear to have emanated from the former dislocations. The larger bimodal image width dislocations were found to have hollow cores, known as 'micropipes'. Detailed contrast analysis of topographic images obtained in transmission and back-reflection geometries establishes that 'micropipes' are Frank-type hollow-core screw dislocations with Burgers vectors typically equal to 3-7 times the c lattice parameter. X-ray topography also revealed many line defects approximately parallel to the (0001) axis that were determined to be screw dislocations with Burgers vectors equal to the c lattice parameter and there were no discernible 'micropipes' associated with these latter screw dislocations.