The effects of the Si/H-2 ratio on the growth of the epitaxial layer and on the epitaxial defects was studied in detail. A large increase of the growth rate has been observed with the increase of the silicon flux in the CVD reactor. Close to a Si/H2 ratio of 0.05 % silicon nucleation in the gas phase occurs producing a great amount of silicon particles that precipitate on the wafers. The epitaxial layers grown with a Si/H-2 ratio of 0.03% show a low defect density and a low leakage current of the Schottky diodes realized on these wafers. For these diodes the DLTS spectra show the presence of several peaks at 0.14, 0.75, 1.36 and 1.43 eV. For epitaxial layers grown with higher values of the Si/H-2 ratio and then with an higher growth rate, the leakage current of the Schottky diodes increases considerably.