The influence of impurities and planar defects on the infrared properties of silicon carbide films

Two cubic, single crystal silicon carbide (3C-SiC) films with similar thickness are shown to exhibit significantly different optical properties at mid-infrared wavelengths. Depth profiling by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy indicates that these two films have substantially different n-type impurity concentrations that are responsible for the observed differences in optical absorption. The influence of impurities manifests as substantially different planar defect morphologies.