However, either amorphous carbon or pyrolytic graphite was detected in most of these carbide films. Despite the risk of carbon co-deposition, the use of aromatic hydrocarbons as carbon precursor may also influence the preferred growth orientation of deposited films. In the work of Leonhardt et al., a transition of preferred growth orientation from <100> to <111> with the change of carbon precursors from aliphatic, e.g. methane, to aromatic hydrocarbons, e.g. benzene, was observed in the growth of TiCx. This phenomenon was later interpreted by Pedersen et al. through quantum chemical calculations where they claimed that the adsorption energy of benzene molecules on TiC(111) surfaces was higher than that on TiC(100), resulting in a <111>-oriented growth, whereas methane molecules did not exhibit preferential adsorption on either surfaces, and therefore the TiC would preferentially grow on the surface that has the lowest surface energy, i.e. (100) in TiC . While both TiC and 3C-SiC are face-centered cubic crystal systems, TiC adopts the rock-salt structure, (B1, No. 225), and 3C-SiC the zincblende structure, (B3, No. 216). Despite their structural difference, the crystal plane along <111> direction in both crystals is terminated only with either C or Si/Ti atoms. This indicates that the (111) planes of TiC and 3C-SiC may exhibit similar properties for adsorbing molecules; therefore, the growth direction of 3C-SiC can possibly be steered in the same way as in the growth of TiC.