Defect Influence on Heteroepitaxial 3C-SiC Young’s Modulus

Heteroepitaxial cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) is an extremely promising material for micro- and nano-electromechanical systems due to its large Young's modulus. Unfortunately, the heteroepitaxy of 3C-SiC on Si substrate is affected by the high mismatch in the lattice parameters and the thermal expansion coefficients between the two dissimilar materials that generate a high number of defects in the material. In this work, through the measurement of natural resonant frequencies and Raman shift analysis, a strong relationship between the mechanical proprieties of the material (Young's modulus) and the film crystal quality (defect density) was observed.