X-ray diffraction topography (XRDT), using both synchrotron white-beam (SWBXT) and conventional MoK alpha(1) radiation, mu-Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) were used to study a complex syntactic coalescence of polytypes in a PVT-grown 6H-SiC sample. The combined use of these techniques has proven to be well suited to determine twin-related lamellae of polytype 15R. Each single technique used here was not fully adequate to establish the polytypic nature and the geometric relationship between the lamellae of foreign polytypes and the surrounding crystal bulk. Xray diffraction topographies showing the whole slice, enabled the location of three lamellae: one lamella, labelled L-1, and two micro-lamellae L-2 and L-3. Lamella L-3 was enclosed in L-1. The diffraction contrast analyses and the mu-Raman spectra indicated that the L-1 and L-2 lamellae were exactly iso-oriented and both consisted of the 15R polytype, whereas the polytype of the L-3 lamella could not be clearly determined. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) enabled a more thorough investigation of the actual polytype of this lamella. TEM analyses were carried out on a small fragment embedding the L-3 lamella and these indicated that L-3 was a 15R polytype which was twin-related by a rotation of 180 degrees about the [0001] axis with a (0001) compositional plane. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.