3. Conclusion
In summary, we found that the nucleation and crystal growth are favored
for 3C than for 4H if the difference between the\(\sigma_{3C/\text{melt}}-\sigma_{4H/\text{melt}}\) is negative enough
by the modification of the melt surface tension, beyond what’s expected
by classic nucleation theory. This led to the growth of high quality and
wafer-scale bulk 3C-SiC single crystals via TSSG. The diameter and the
thickness of the 3C-SiC ingot is 4-inch and 4.0~10.0 mm,
respectively. More importantly, this TSSG route provides a reliable
method to grow high-quality wafer-scale 3C-SiC, exhibiting the potential
for further mass production. The grown 3C-SiC single crystals show
high-crystallinity, high conductivity and availability, which are very
suitable for homogeneous epitaxy and device fabrication. Better
homoepitaxy 3C films and the power devices are expected to be
fabricated, and thus boost the SiC industry further. Alteration of
interfacial energy reported here could be applied to other layered
materials to obtain the single crystals that otherwise are difficulty to
grow.
4. Experimental Section/Methods
Experimental details are provided in the Supporting Information.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology
Project (Grant No. Z211100004821004), the Special Project on Transfer
and Conversion of Scientific and Technological Achievements of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KFJ-HGZX-042). We thank YS from
Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOP, CAS) for the
single crystal XRD measurement; SJ from IOP, CAS for the discussion of
the single-crystal XRD results; QZ from IOP, CAS for the help of TEM
measurements; ZZ, GZ, LY and CP from Beijing Lattice Semiconductor Co.,
Ltd. for technical help.