Transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were used to study the origin of a preferred nucleation site on the atomically flat 3C-SiC mesas leading to the formation of tetrahedral hillocks. The hillocks exhibited a so-called wedding cake structure consisting of concentric triangular terraces with a step height of 0.25nm corresponding to the thickness of a single Si-C bilayer. KOH etching revealed the presence of a threading dislocation at the center of the hillock. Its Burgers vector was shown to lie in the basal plane with no component along the surface normal. It was argued that the strain fields around a threading edge dislocation made it a preferred nucleation site.

Nucleation of 3C-SiC Associated with Threading Edge Dislocations during Chemical Vapor Deposition. M.Abadier, R.A.Berechman, P.G.Neudeck, A.J.Trunek, M.Skowronski: Journal of Crystal Growth, 2012, 347[1], 45-8