Finding the Optimum Chloride-Based Chemistry for Chemical Vapor Deposition of SiC

Chemical vapor deposition of silicon carbide with a chloride-based chemistry can be done using several different silicon and carbon precursors. Here, we present a comparative study of SiCl4, SiHCl3, SiH4+HCl, C3H8, C2H4 and CH4 in an attempt to find the optimal precursor combination. We find that while the chlorinated silanes SiCl4 and especially SiHCl3 give higher growth rate than natural silane and HCl, SiH4+HCl gives better morphology at C/Si around 1 and SiCl4 gives the best morphology at low C/Si. Our study shows no effect on doping incorporation with precursor chemistry. We suggest that these results can be explained by the number of reaction steps in the gas phase chemical reaction mechanisms for producing SiCl2, which is the most important Si species, and by formation of organosilicons in the gas phase. As carbon precursor, C3H8 or C2H4 are more or less equal in performance with a slight advantage for C3H8, CH4 is however not a carbon precursor that should be used unless extraordinary growth conditions are needed