*2.1. Deposition Method*

SiC thin films were grown onto polished p-type Si (100) wafers, either with or without an AlN layer, via HiPIMS in a high-vacuum chamber with a background pressure of 6 × 10−<sup>6</sup> Torr. More details about the HiPIMS reactor can be found elsewhere [34,35]. The working pressure of the argon gas (99.999%, White-Martins, São José dos Campos, Brazil) was maintained at 3 mTorr for a corresponding flow rate of 20 sccm (standard centimeter cubic per minute). The target was a commercial high-purity SiC (99.5%, Kurt J. Lesker Company, Jefferson Hills, PA, USA) with a diameter of 4 inches. For film growth, the applied power from the HiPIMS power supply (HIP<sup>3</sup> 5 kW, Solvix SA, Villaz-Saint-Pierre, Switzerland) was 200 W and 400 W. In all cases, the duty cycle was fixed at 5%, frequency at 500 Hz, and pulse time at 100 μs. To remove the target surface contaminants, a pre-sputtering time of 200 W for 10 min was applied. In addition, the substrate holder was maintained at a floating potential, whereas the deposition time and the target-substrate distance were fixed at 60 min and 60 mm, respectively.

The AlN/Si substrates were provided by the "Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel in Nantes University". In these substrates, the sputtered AlN intermediate layer had a thickness of 1300 nm and a (002) crystallographic orientation. For more details, see References [36,37].
