Journal of Crystal Growth 282 (2005) 286–289 Liquid phase homoepitaxial growth of 6H-SiC on ð01 ¯ 15Þ oriented substrates O. Filip à , B. Epelbaum, Z.G. Herro, M. Bickermann, A. Winnacker Department of Material Science 6, University of Erlangen-Nu¨rnberg, Martensstr. 7, D-91058 Erlangen, Germany Received 29 April 2005; received in revised form 3 May 2005; accepted 4 May 2005 Available online 20 June 2005 Communicated by R. Bhat Abstract Liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) of SiC from a diluted Si-based melt was performed on wafers with ð01 ¯ 15Þ orientation on physical vapor transport (PVT) grown 6H-SiC. Epitaxial growth on ð01 ¯ 15Þ substrates occurred by a step flow mode, producing mirror-like homoepitaxial SiC layers. Using the method of horizontal dipping, layers with a thickness up to 12 mm were grown on ð01 ¯ 15Þ Si-side, with a growth rate of about 0.2 mm/h. The roughness of the deposited layer was about 10 nm, comparable with the as-polished state of the processed seed. However, the epitaxial growth on ð01 ¯ 15Þ C- side showed a completely different growth morphology. Rough surface with large islands showing a pronounced step bunching developed on C-side with a growth rate of about 1 mm/h. r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. PACS: 81.10.D; 81.05.H Keywords: A3. Liquid-phase epitaxy; B2. Semiconducting silicon carbide 1. Introduction Nowadays, SiC epitaxial growth is a key technology for high performance SiC devices. Almost all SiC devices are implemented in homo- epitaxial films of the 4H/6H-SiC polytypes grown on low-tilt-angle vicinal (0001) SiC wafers [1]. The device performance is strongly affected by the numerous structural defects, such as dislocations and micropipes (MP) which develop along the [0 0 0 1] axis, being replicated from the substrate or produced during epitaxial growth or device processing. It was suggested that the growth on SiC substrates with large off-axis angle from the [0 0 0 1] axis would result in reduced crystal defects. Useful achievements like micropipe elimination by dissociation processes, were reached by bulk growth and homoepitaxy of SiC performed on non-standard ð11 20Þ and ð03 38Þ surfaces [2,3]. However, epitaxial growth on strongly ARTICLE IN PRESS www.elsevier.com/locate/jcrysgro 0022-0248/$-see front matter r 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jcrysgro.2005.05.013 à Corresponding author. Tel.: 0049091318528157. E-mail address: octavian.filip@ww.uni-erlangen.de (O. Filip).