A simple mechanistic model of the oxidation of SiC is presented and analysed using Monte- Carlo simulation techniques. The model explains the observed anisotropic oxidation rate of SiC in terms of the effect of weakening/strengthening of Si-C bonds arising from the ongoing incorporation of highly electronegative oxygen atoms into the crystal lattice. The extraction of key process metrics (such as oxide thickness, interface roughness and oxide defect density) from the Monte-Carlo simulations is discussed.

This paper reports on the relationship between the microstructure and the device performance of Pt/4H-SiC schottky barrier diodes ( SBDs ). The evolution of microstructure in the metal/SiC interfaces annealed at different temperatures was characterized using X-ray scattering techniques. The reverse characteristics of the devices were degraded with annealing temperatures. The maximum breakdown voltages of as-deposited devices and 850 °C annealed devices are 1300 V and 626 V, respectively. However, the forward characteristics of the devices were found out to improve with annealing temperatures. X-ray scattering analysis showed that Pt-silicides were formed by annealing performed at or higher than 650 °C. The formation of silicides was shown to increase the roughness of the Pt/SiC interface. It is believed that the forward characteristics of the SBDs be strongly dependent on the crystallity of silicides formed in the Pt/SiC interface during the annealing process.

Results about a new CVD system suited for epitaxial growth on six 2 inch SiC-wafers at a time are presented. Excellent gas flow stability is achieved for this new reactor type as shown by in- situ observations of the gas flow dynamics in the reactor chamber. These experimental results agree favorably with numerical process simulation results.

The epitaxial layers grown in the multi-wafer system so far show a by an order of magnitude higher background impurity level (≤1015 cm−3) as reported previously for layers grown in single-wafer systems by the authors and other groups (≤ 1014 cm−3). On the other hand, the doping homogeneity achieved until today is very encouraging. The variation on a 2 inch wafer is less than ± 20% at about 1*1016 cm−3. The wafer to wafer variation of the average doping value both within a run and from run to run is within 15 %. The reproducibility and uniformity of the layer thickness is even better (total thickness variation ≤5% on a 2 inch wafer). The surface of the epitaxial layers is very smooth with a typical growth step height of 0.5 nm (4H, 8° off orientation). First measurements on Schottky diodes build on these layers show low leakage current values indicating low point defect density in the epitaxial layers.

A multi-wafer silicon carbide vapor phase epitaxy reactor is employed that features full planetary motion and is capable of high quality epitaxy on seven, two-inch diameter substrates. We are currently performing preproduction growths of static induction transistor (SIT) and metal semiconductor field effect transistor (MESFET) active layers. On a 2-inch diameter substrate, layer uniformity is typically ±5% (standard deviation/mean) for both dopant concentration and layer thickness (for 1 3/8-inch substrates, layer uniformity is around ±3%). For the seven wafers within a run, interwafer uniformity has been dramatically improved to approximately ±8% for dopant concentration and ±3% for layer thickness. Process control charts will be presented which exhibit that interrun (run-to-run) variation in both thickness and doping can be kept within ±10% of the desired values.

Epitaxial 4H-SiC layers suitable for high power devices have been grown in a hot-wall chemical-vapor deposition (CVD) system. These layers were subsequently characterized for many parameters important in device development and production. The uniformity of both thickness and doping will be presented.

Doping trends vs. temperature and growth rate will be shown for the p-type dopant used. The n-type dopant drops in concentration with increasing temperature or increasing growth rate. In contrast, the p-type dopant increases in concentration with decreasing temperature or increasing growth rate. A simple descriptive model for this behavior will be presented.

The outcome from capacitance-voltage and SIMS measurements demonstrate that transitions from n to n−, or p to p−, and even n to p levels can be made quickly without adjustment to growth conditions. The ability to produce sharp transitions without process changes avoids degrading the resulting surface morphology or repeatability of the process. Avoiding process changes is particularly important in growth of thick layers since surface roughness tends to increase with layer thickness.

Device results from diodes producing two different blocking voltages in excess of 5 kV will also be shown. The higher voltage diodes exhibited a breakdown behavior which was near the theoretical limit for the epitaxial layer thickness and doping level grown.

Silicon carbide technology is rapidly developing into a production process. This is due to rapid progress in the development of high quality epitaxy and substrates. We report on the development of a resistively heated vertical reactor and it's application to homo-epitaxy and selective area growth. Epitaxial growth of 4H and 6H-SiC requires high temperatures (in excess of 1500°C). In this work we investigate resistive heating which offers advantages in cost, temperature uniformity and power efficiency of heating. However, resistive heating presents major technological challenges. Due to the power efficiencies possible with resistive heating we are able to obtain temperatures in excess of 1750°C. Using this system we have grown “state of the art” 4H and 6H-SiC. At 1580°C our background doping is p-type at a level of 3–5×1015cm−3 as measured by capacitance techniques in agreement with earlier results presented by investigators from Siemens Corp using a similar system. The background concentration increases by about an order of magnitude at 1680°C. This system has also been used to perform experiments with selective area growth of SiC using a graphite mask. This masking technology allows for the growth of SiC in specific regions at elevated temperature in excess of 1600°C.

SiC is suitable for power devices but high quality SiC epitaxial layers having a high breakdown voltage are needed and thick epilayer is indispensable. In this study, CST method (Close Space Technique) was used to rapidly grow thick epitaxial layers. Source material used was 3C-SiC polycrystalline plate of high purity while 4H-SiC(0001) crystals inclined 8° off toward <1120> was used for the substrate. Quality of the epilayer was influenced significantly by pressure during growth and polarity of the substrate. A p-type conduction was obtained by changing the size of p-type source material. The carrier concentration of epilayer decreased when a lower pressure was employed. Schottky diode was also fabricated.

SiC/Si films generally contain stacking faults and amorphous regions near the interface. High quality SiC/Si films are especially difficult to obtain since the temperatures usually required to grow high quality SiC are above the Si melting point. We added Ge in the form of GeH2 to the reactant gases to promote two-dimensional CVD growth of SiC films on (111) Si substrates at 1000°C. The films grown with no Ge are essentially amorphous with very small crystalline regions, whereas those films grown with GeH2 flow rates of 10 and 15 sccm are polycrystalline with the 3C structure. Increasing the flow rate to 20 sccm improves the crystallinity and induces growth of 6H SiC over an initial 3C layer. This study presents the first observation of spontaneous polytype transformation in SiC grown on Si by MOCVD.

Single crystal cubic silicon carbide ( 3C-SiC ) has been deposited on Si(100) by atmospheric CVD at 1350°C using Si2(CH3)6. The 3C-SiC epilayers were characterized by XRD, Raman scattering and photoluminescence (PL). The 3C-SiC distinct TO near 796 cm−1 and LO near 973 cm−1 were recorded by Raman measurement. The PL spectra of SiC films at 11K included the nitrogen-bound exciton (N-BE) lines, the ‘defect-related’ W band near 2.15eV, and 2.13eV peak corresponding to D-A pair recombination as well as the ‘divacancy-related’ D 1 peak at 1.97eV. The thickness dependences of Raman and PL measurement were made and it was observed that tensile stress and strain in films decrease with increasing film thickness. Electrical properties of the films were measured by making schottky diodes and using Van der Pauw method. Above 300K, the electron mobility changed as μH ∼ T−1.45 ∼ −1.56 and the highest mobility was about 400 cm2V−1s−1 at room temperature. In 3C-SiC the scattering processes are affected prominently by acoustic scattering in this temperature range.

Low-loped p-type silicon carbide buffer layers are grown by chemical vapor deposition on conducting and semi-insulating substrates. Capacitance-voltage and electrical admittance techniques are developed for accurate non-destructive characterization. The electrical admittance techniques suggested are capable of measuring the resistivity in a very wide range, up to 7 orders of magnitude. MESFET devices using thick buffer layers on conducting substrates are reported with Ft=8.4 GHz and Fmax=32 GHz.

Raman spectroscopy has been used to investigate wafers of both 4H-SiC and 6H-SiC. The two-phonon Raman spectra from both 4H- and 6H-SiC have been measured and found to be polytype dependent, consistent with changes in the vibrational density of states. We have observed electronic Raman scattering from nitrogen defect levels in both 4H- and 6H-SiC at room temperature. We have found that electronic Raman scattering from the nitrogen defect levels is significantly enhanced with excitation by red or near IR laser light. These results demonstrate that the laser wavelength is a key parameter in the characterization of SiC by Raman scattering. These results suggest that Raman spectroscopy can be used as a noninvasive, in situ diagnostic for SiC wafer production and substrate evaluation. We also present results on time-resolved photoluminescence spectra of n-type SiC wafers.

Crystalline 3C-SiC thin films were successfully grown on (100) and (111) Si substrates by using ArF pulsed laser ablation from a SiC ceramic target combined with a vacuum annealing process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) were employed to study the effect of annealing on the structure of thin films deposited at 800°C. It was demonstrated that vacuum annealing could transform the amorphous SiC films into crystalline phase and that the crystallinity was strongly dependent on the annealing temperature. For the samples deposited on (100) and (111) Si, the optimum annealing temperatures were 980 and 920°C, respectively. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) micrographs exhibited different characteristic microstructure for the (100) and (111) Si cases, similar to that observed for the carbonization layer initially formed in chemical vapor deposition of SiC films on Si. This also showed the presence of the epitaxial relationship of 3C-SiC[100]//Si[100] and 3C-SiC[111]//Si[111] in the direction of growth.

3C-SiC/Si structures with Ge incorporation are elaborated by solid source molecular beam epitaxy (SSMBE). A comparison of the flatness of the SiC-surface and the interface between SiC and Si by comparing the deposition with and without Ge is made. The results are analyzed within the framework of a theoretical approach based on the theory of elasticity.

We have obtained single-crystal 3C-SiC films via conversion of the surface region of Si (111) and (100) wafers at 970 °C by reaction with C2H4 in an MBE reactor. The major defects in the films were clusters, voids, and misfit dislocations. Investigation by high resolution TEM images showed low lattice strains in the epitaxial layer due to the formation of 1 misfit dislocation for every 4 to 5 regular SiC planes that are bonded to Si at the interface. The clusters and voids often occurred in pairs. A model for forming the void-cluster pairs is suggested.

Mg doped cubic GaN layers were studied by steady state and time resolved photoluminescence. The blue emission due to Mg doping can be decomposed in three bands. The decay curves and the spectral shift with time delays indicates donor-acceptor pair behaviour. This can be confirmed by excitation density dependent measurements. Furthermore temperature dependent analysis shows that the three emissions have one impurity in common. We propose that this is an acceptor level related to the Mg incorporation and the three deep donor levels are due to compensation effects.

We measured the ellipsometric response from 0.7–5.4 eV of c-axis oriented AlN on Si (111) grown by molecular beam epitaxy. We determine the film thicknesses and find that for our AlN the refractive index is about 5–10% lower than in bulk AlN single crystals. Most likely, this discrepancy is due to a low film density (compared to bulk AlN), based on measurements using Rutherford backscattering. The films were also characterized using atomic force microscopy and x-ray diffraction to study the growth morphology. We find that AlN can be grown on Si (111) without buffer layers resulting in truely two-dimensional growth, low surface roughness, and relatively narrow x-ray peak widths.

Thermal admittance spectroscopy was used to characterize the shallow dopants in chemical vapor deposition ( CVD) grown thin films and in sublimation sandwich method ( SSM) grown 4H-SiC layers. The values of the activation energy levels of EC − 0.054 eV for Nitrogen at the hexagonal site and of EC − 0.10 eV for Nitrogen at the cubic site were indices of comparison. The net carrier concentrations ( ND − NV ) of the films were determined by capacitance-voltage measurements. The net carrier concentrations for the SSM films ranged from 2 × 1017 to 7 × 1017 cm−3. The two Nitrogen levels were observed in the CVD films. Hopping conduction with an activation energy of EC −0.0058 eV was observed in one SSM sample having ND − NV = 7 × 1017 cm−3.

SiC is an important wide bandgap semiconductor material for high temperature and high power electronic device applications. Purity improvements in the growth environment has resulted in a two-fold benefit during growth: (a) minimized inconsistencies in the background doping resulting in high resistivity (>5000 ohm-cm) wafer yield increase from 10–15% to 70-85%, and (b) decrease in micropipe formation. Growth parameters play an important role in determining the perfection and properties of the SiC crystals, and are extremely critical in the growth of large diameter crystals. Several aspects of growth are vital in obtaining highly perfect, large diameter crystals, such as: (i) optimized furnace design, (ii) high purity growth environment, and (iii) carefully controlled growth conditions. Although significant reduction in micropipe density has been achieved by improvements in the growth process, more stringent device requirements mandate further reduction in the defect density. In-depth understanding of the mechanisms of micropipe formation is essential in order to devise approaches to eliminate them. Experiments have been performed to understand the role of growth conditions and ambient purity on crystal perfection by intentionally introducing arrays of impurity sites on one half of the growth surface. Results clearly suggest that presence of impurities or second phase inclusions during start or during growth can result in the nucleation of micropipes. Insights obtained from these studies were instrumental in the growth of ultra-low micropipe density (less than 2 micropipes cm−2 ) in 1.5 inch diameter boules.

Vanadium is an important dopant in SiC because it gives rise to donor levels near the middle of the bandgap which can be used to make the material semi-insulating, and semiinsulating material has many applications as a substrate material for high-power electronics. However, conventional means of characterizing electronic levels in the bandgap of the material require very high temperatures, in the neighborhood of 650–800 °C, in order to move the Fermi level to midgap and cause ionization of the V donors. The technique of Optical Admittance Spectroscopy permits the ionization of the midgap donors using light of the appropriate energy, and thus avoids the need for high temperatures. Using this technique we have examined several specimens of V-doped and high-resistivity 4H-SiC. We have identified levels previously associated with V, and new levels we attribute to Ti. Pinning of the Fermi level in some specimens was verified by high-temperature Hall effect measurements. SIMS measurements were used to determine impurity concentrations. IR absorption measurements were correlated with the Ti, V, and Cr concentrations determined by SIMS.

An advanced method based on x-ray imaging is presented which allows us to visualize the ongoing processes during physical vapor transport (PVT) growth of SiC. Using a high resolution and high speed x-ray imaging detector based on image plates and digital recording we are able to follow the SiC bulk single crystal growth as well as the evolution of the SiC powder source inside the inductively heated graphite crucible on-line and quasi-continuously.