A growth process has been investigated for the epitaxial growth of silicon carbide. The technique can simply be described as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at high temperatures, hence the name high temperature CVD (HTCVD). The growth process however, differs greatly from that of the CVD process due to the significant sublimation and etch rates at the extreme growth temperatures (1800–2300°C). The grown rates obtained with the HTCVD are in the order of several tens of &mgr;m/h to 0.5 mm/h. The purity and crystallinity of the growth layers are outstanding showing strong free exciton related photoluminescence. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.