Partial dislocations and stacking faults in cubic SiC

Numerous stacking faults and dislocations (formed by intersection of stacking faults and dislocations limiting nonintersecting stacking faults) in the 3C-SiC films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a silicon substrate were studied by electron microscopy with the use of weak beams. A procedure for determining any of possible Burgers vectors of the (1/6)〈116〉-type glide dislocations and the (1/6) 〈110〉-and (1/3)〈001〉-type sessile partial dislocations (in face-centered cubic lattices) is developed based on the criterion of the contrast value. The sessile dislocations formed by intersections of stacking faults were shown to have the (1/6)〈110〉-and (1/3)〈001〈-type Burgers vectors. The width of nonintersecting stacking faults corresponds to the stacking-fault energy ranging within 0.1–2 mJ/m².