Study of the connection between stacking faults evolution and step kinetics in misoriented 4H-SiC epitaxial growths

Three dimensional Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations on super-lattices are applied to study the evolution of several types of stacking faults during homo-epitaxial growths of (11-20) misoriented 4H silicon carbide (SiC). We show that these defects can either propagate throughout the entire epilayer (i.e. extended from the substrate up to the surface) or close in dislocation loops, in dependence on the surface kinetics. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the surface instability rules both stacking fault propagation and step bunching mechanism.