Evolution of threading screw dislocation conversion during solution growth of 4H-SiC

Evolution of threading screw dislocation (TSD) conversion during the solution growth of 4H-SiC on a vicinal crystal of 4H-SiC(0001) was investigated by synchrotron X-ray topography. Selecting appropriate X-ray wavelength and g vector, we can change the penetration of X-ray, and the dislocation behaviors with the different depth were successfully observed. Evidently TSDs parallel to the c-axis having c-component Burgers vector were changed into defects on the (0001) basal planes with the same Burgers vector as the TSDs, propagating to the [11 (2) over bar0] step-flow direction by advancing macrosteps during the solution growth. The TSD conversions stochastically took place during the growth. The conversion rate was almost uniform and finally almost all TSDs were converted to the basal plane defects. The conversion rate was low at the very early stage of the growth, which implies that the macrosteps were not formed at the initial stage of the solution growth. (C) 2013 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.