Single crystals of 6H-SiC were grown by physical vapour transport. The duplications of several types of stacking fault such as <24>, <15> and <3111> were observed by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy. First-principle calculations revealed that the formation energies of single <24> and <15> were very low while that of <3111> was much higher. Further calculations demonstrated that the continuous stacking faults possessed larger stress along the c-axis than the separated stacking faults. This suggested that the stress should be the reason for the stacking fault duplication, and the stacking fault could be duplicated under higher c-axis stress.

Stacking Fault Duplication in 6H-SiC Single Crystal. B.Y.Chen, E.W.Shi, Z.Z.Chen, X.B.Li, B.Xiao: Japan Journal of Applied Physics, 2008, 47, 4491-3