Preparation of crystal oriented α-SiC films by pulsed ArF laser deposition on Si(111)

By ablating ceramic SiC target with pulsed ArF laser, SiC films were deposited on the Si(111) substrate at 800°C. After post deposition annealing at 920°C in high vacuum (10^-3Pa), crystal α-SiC films were obtained. The properties of the films before and after annealing such as the surface morphology, crystal structure, composition, chemical state of the element and photoluminescence were studied. SiC film has grown up to a highly oriented crystal α-SiC (0001) //Si (111) epitaxial film through amorphous nucleation and growth process at 920°C. The ratio of C and Si is about 1.01 inside the film. There are some contaminated carbon and a small quantity of oxidized Si and C on the surface. Excited by ultraviolet light with the wavelength of 280 nm at room temperature, the films give a fairly strong emission peak at 341 nm, whose FWHM (full width of half maximum is 45 nm, showing rather good shortwave photoluminescence quality.