Computer simulation of surface diffusion of silicon and carbon adatoms on SiC(001)

Silicon Carbide (SiC) has attracted much interest in recent years because it is a wide gap material displaying a high breakdown field and high electron saturation drift velocity. This coupled with the recent advances in growth techniques of SiC has made it a strong candidate material for high-temperature, high-power devices. In order to grow high quality single crystal wafers of SiC, one needs to have a good understanding of the dynamics of deposited atoms on the crystal surface. Molecular dynamics (MD) is a technique that can give detailed information about adsorption and diffusive motions [1]. Theoretical studies to date of the SiC(001) surface have concentrated on the static properties [2, 3] and little or no work has been done on the dynamics of adatoms. However, with new experimental results [4] on surface diffusion in this system, it is important to undertake theoretical studies of quantities which can be related directly to experimental measurements.