Threading dislocations in heteroepitaxial β-SiC films grown onto (001)Si by chemical vapour deposition were studied. A large number of threading dislocations were present and these were dissociated into two partial dislocations which bounded a planar fault. The introduction of these threading dislocations was attributed to residual coherency stresses present in the deposited films. This occurred via the formation of half-loops, at the deposit surface, which subsequently glided towards the film/substrate interface. It was proposed that the threading dislocations were dissociated into two partial dislocations having Burgers vectors, b, given by b = ¼(111), which bound an antiphase boundary according to the reaction,

½[101] ¼[111] + APB + ¼[1¯11]

and that this dissociation was stabilized by a low antiphase-boundary energy in β-SiC.

Threading Dislocations in Chemical-Vapour-Deposited β-SiC on (001)Si. T.T.Cheng, M.Aindow: Philosophical Magazine Letters, 1990, 62[4], 239-46