Search

Thick 4H-SiC epilayers have be grown with n-type and p-type doping in the range 1x1014 cm‑3 to mid 1x1018 cm‑3, with the purpose of investigating the influence of doping on carrier lifetime. Growth conditions were identical for all grown epilayers, except for the dopant gas flow rates. A drastic decrease in carrier lifetime was observed with increasing doping level, in both n-type and p-type layers. The decrease in lifetime could not be related to the Z1/2 center but are rather due to an enhanced effect of direct band-to-band and Auger recombination’s (AR) at higher doping levels. Calculations of Auger coefficients for the recombination’s are indicating Auger recombination’s as the main recombination mechanism at the highest doping levels. Indications are made stronger from the temperature dependence of Auger coefficients. An increased background intensity arises around 400 K during temperature dependent time-resolved photoluminescence measurements of n-type epilayers are observed and are thought to be related to boron impurities.

The effect of different C/Si ratio on the surface morphology has been studied to optimize the on-axis homoepitaxial growth conditions on 4H-SiC substrates to improve the surface roughness of epilayers. The overall surface roughness is found to decrease with decreasing C/Si ratio. An order of magnitude lower surface roughness has been observed using C/Si ratio = 0.8 without disturbing the polytype stability in the epilayer. A high growth rate of 10 µm/h was achieved without introducing 3C inclusions. The epilayers grown at higher growth rate with C/Si ratio = 1 also had improvements in the surface roughness. 100% 4H polytype was maintained in the epilayers grown with C/Si ratio in the range of 1.2 to 0.8 and with high growth rate of 10 µm/h.

SiC MESFETs were scaled both laterally and vertically to optimize high frequency and high power performance. Two types of epi-stacks of SiC MESFETs were fabricated and measured. The first type has a doping of 3×1017 cm-3 in the channel and the second type has higher doping (5×1017 cm-3) in the channel. The higher doping allows the channel to be thinner for the same current density and therefore a reduction of the aspect ratio is possible. This could impede short channel effects. For the material with higher channel doping the maximum transconductance is 58 mS/mm. The maximum current gain frequency, fT, and maximum frequency of oscillation, fmax, is 9.8 GHz and 23.9 GHz, and 12.4 GHz and 28.2 GHz for the MESFET with lower doped channel and higher doping, respectively.

Free carrier dynamics has been studied in 4H- and 3C-SiC in a wide temperature range using time-resolved photoluminescence, free carrier absorption, and light induced transient grating techniques. Considerably high carrier lifetime was observed in 3C-SiC epitaxial layers grown on 4H-SiC substrates using hot-wall CVD with respect to previously reported values for 3C-SiC grown either on Si or on 6H-SiC substrates. The temperature dependences of carrier lifetime and diffusion coefficient for 4H- and 3C-SiC were compared. Shorter photoluminescence decay time with respect to free carrier absorption decay time was observed in the same 4H-SiC sample, while these techniques revealed similar trends in the carrier lifetime temperature dependencies. However, the latter dependences for hot-wall CVD-grown 3C layers were found different if measured by time resolved photoluminescence and free carrier absorption techniques.

An extended structural defects which locally drastically reduces the carrier lifetime, has been observed in as-grown epilayers. A combination of back polishing, etching in molten KOH and optical microscopy revealed the geometrical structure of the stacking fault inside the epilayer. The fault started close to the epi-substrate interface, expanded initially rapidly but changed geometry after some time and reduced in size during further growth. The optical spectrum as well as the temperature dependence from this fault is identical to the emission from the single Shockley stacking faults previously only observed and formed in the bipolar diodes during forward voltage operation.

Two different and novel in-grown triangular stacking faults have been observed and characterized in 4H-SiC epitaxial layers grown on 4o off-cut substrates. The faults were formed at the beginning of the growth and extended continuously in size during the growth. Their structural and optical properties were however different as seen from both synchrotron white beam topography and low temperature photoluminescence. The luminescence spectra were similar but appeared in different energy regions 2.85 – 2.95 eV and 2.48 – 2.64 eV, respectively. BPDs present in the epilayer are found to be transformed into SFs under laser excitation during high resolution optically detected lifetime mapping. The faults are found to expand from the epilayer surface towards the epi-substrate interface. The optical spectrum from this fault is identical to the emission from the single layered Shockley stacking faults with excitonic bandgap of 3.034 eV previously only observed and formed in the bipolar diodes during forward voltage operation.

Homoepitaxial growth has been performed on 3” Si-face on-axis 4H–SiC substrates using standard gas system in a horizontal Hot-wall chemical vapor deposition system. Substrate surface damages are found to act as preferential nucleation sites for 3C inclusions also, the surface morphology after in-situ etching is found to largely influence the polytype stability in the epilayer. Different in-situ etching conditions were studied where Si-rich conditions are found to be better. Growth parameters and starting growth conditions are refined to obtain stable polytype in the epilayer. High quality homoepitaxial layers with 100% 4H–SiC are obtained on 3” substrates. Different optical and structural techniques are used to characterize the layers and to understand the growth mechanisms. The layers are found to be of high quality and no epitaxial defects typically found on off-axis epitaxial layers are observed. A high surface roughness is observed in these layers, however higher growth rate significantly lowers the surface roughness without affecting the polytype stability in the epilayer.

We have performed 2D X-ray diffraction mapping of the SiC lattice basal plane orientation over full 2” SiC substrates. Measurements of the omega angle were made in two perpendicular directions <11-20> and <1-100>, which gives the complete vectorized tilt of the basal planes. The Mapping revealed two characteristic bending behaviors on measured commercial wafers. The first is characterized by large variations in omega angle across the wafer in both crystallographic directions. The continuously changing omega angle in both directions gives the wafer an apparent rotationally symmetric bending which is concave towards the growth direction. The second characteristic behavior is seen in wafers with lower degree of omega angle variation. The variations in this type of wafers are not changing linearly, but are bending the basal planes with two-fold symmetry.

Thick 4H-SiC epitaxial layers have been characterized using high-resolution lifetime mapping. The lifetime maps are obtain by the detection of photoluminescence decay of the band gap emission. Full wafers mappings with 200 m resolution reveal lifetime variations that can be associated with structural defects replicated from the substrate, and variations in epitaxial growth conditions due to the susceptor design. High resolution mapping over smaller regions with down to 20 m step size, reveals local lifetime reductions associated with different structural defects in the epitaxial layer. Identified defects that influence the lifetime are the carrot defect, different types of in-grown stacking faults, and an unidentified defect associated with a pair of basal plane dislocations on the surface. Also clusters of threading screw dislocations, probably originating from a dissociated micropipe in the substrate, are found to reduce the lifetime.

Homoepitaxial growth has been performed on Si-face nominally on-axis 4H-SiC substrates. Special attention was paid to the surface preparation before starting the growth. Si-face polished surfaces were studied after etching under C-rich, Si-rich and under pure hydrogen ambient conditions. In-situ surface preparation, starting growth parameters and growth temperature are found to play a vital role to maintain the polytype stability in the epilayer. High quality epilayers with 100% 4H-SiC were obtained on full 2” wafer. Complete PiN structure was grown and more than 70% of the diodes showed a stable behavior and the forward voltage drift was less than 0.1 V. Also, a comparison of the electroluminescence images of diodes before and after heavy injection of 125 A/cm2 for 30 min did not show any sign of stacking fault formation in the device active region.

We report on the luminescence spectra related to Ti impurity in both 4H- and 6H-SiC polytypes. The spectrum depends strongly on the polarization. They are two families of lines in 4H and three in 6H. The main no-phonon line of each family is shown as a triplet and its phonon structure contains both sharp and broad replicas. The higher energy family has also extra lines at high energy appearing when the temperature increases. The spectra can be detected with excitation energy below the excitonic bandgap and even with excitation energy below the spectrum itself. Time-resolved photoluminescence reveals 0.1 ms long lifetime at low temperature.

An innovative process has been developed by Linköping University to prepare the 4HSiC substrate surface before epitaxial growth. The processed PiN diodes have been characterized in forward and reverse mode at different temperature. The larger diodes (2.56 mm2) have a very low leakage current around 20 nA @ 500V for temperatures up to 300ºC. A performant yield (68%) was obtained on these larger diodes have a breakdown voltage superior to 500V. Electroluminescence characteristics have been done on these devices and they show that there is no generation of Stacking Faults during the bipolar conduction.

Epitaxial layers were grown in a horizontal hot-wall CVD reactor and intentionally doped with aluminium in a wide concentration range by varying the flow of aluminium into the reactor. The layers were grown on 4H and 6H SiC substrates on both Si and C face. Low temperature photoluminescence (LTPL) has been used to characterize the layers; 6H-SiC show differences in the structure of the Al bound-exciton (Al-BE) between the two faces, suggesting that the site preference is face dependent. From the LTPL spectra the Al concentration in the layers can be estimated.

Growth of thick epitaxial SiC layers needed for high power devices is presented for horizontal hot-wall CVD (HWCVD) reactors. We demonstrate thickness of epilayer of 100 μm and more with good morphology, low-doping with no doping variation through the whole thick layer and reasonable carrier lifetime which mainly depends on the substrate quality. Typical epidefects are described and their density can dramatically be reduced when choosing correctly the growth conditions as well as the polishing of the surface prior to the growth. The control of the doping and thickness uniformities as well as the run-to-run reproducibility is also presented. Various characterization techniques such as optical microscopy, AFM, reflectance, CV, PL and minority carrier lifetime have been used. Results of high-voltage SiC Schottky power devices are presented.

We report on the growth of 4H-SiC epitaxial layer on Si-face polished nominally on-axis 2” full wafer, using Hot-Wall CVD epitaxy. The polytype stability has been maintained over the larger part of the wafer, but 3C inclusions have not been possible to avoid. Special attention has given to the mechanism of generation and propagation of 3C polytype in 4H-SiC epilayer. Different optical and structural techniques were used to characterize the material and to understand the growth mechanisms. It was found that all 3C inclusions were generated at the interface between the substrate and the epitaxial layer, and no 3C inclusions were initiated at later stages of the growth.

A detailed investigation of the optical and electronic properties of the deep-level defect UD-4 is reported. This defect has recently been observed in 4H semi-insulating silicon carbide, but has hardly been studied yet. Both low temperature and temperature-dependent photoluminescence were collected from the defect. Zeeman spectroscopy measurements were performed as well as time-resolved photoluminescence.

Thick epitaxial layers of 4H-SiC both n- and p-type were grown using horizontal Hot- Wall CVD (HWCVD). No large difference in the carrier lifetime was observed for the layers grown on n- and p-type substrates. The carrier lifetime usually increases with the increasing thickness of the epilayer. To investigate if the growth conditions and material properties are changing during the longer growth time a sample was prepared with uniformly varying epilayer thickness from 20μm on one side to 110μm on other side. Results of optical and electrical measurements, the variation in background impurities and other deep levels are discussed. Furthermore, the properties of thick layers grown on on-axis substrates are presented.

Forward voltage instability, or Vf drift, has confounded high voltage SiC device makers for the last several years. The SiC community has recognized that the root cause of Vf drift in bipolar SiC devices is the expansion of basal plane dislocations (BPDs) into Shockley Stacking Faults (SFs) within device regions that experience conductivity modulation. In this presentation, we detail relatively simple procedures that reduce the density of Vf drift inducing BPDs in epilayers to <10 cm-2 and permit the fabrication of bipolar SiC devices with very good Vf stability. The first low BPD technique employs a selective etch of the substrate prior to epilayer growth to create a near on-axis surface where BPDs intersect the substrate surface. The second low BPD technique employs lithographic and dry etch patterning of the substrate prior to epilayer growth. Both processes impede the propagation of BPDs into epilayers by preferentially converting BPDs into threading edge dislocations (TEDs) during the initial stages of epilayer growth. With these techniques, we routinely achieve Vf stability yields of up to 90% in devices with active areas from 0.006 to 1 cm2, implying that the utility of the processes is not limited by device size.

Recombination enhanced defect annealing of intrinsic defects in 4H-SiC, created by low energy electron irradiation, has been observed. A reduction the defect concentration at temperature lower than the normal annealing temperature of 400º C and 800ºC is observed after either above bandgap laser excitation or forward biasing of a pin-diode. The presence of the defects has been studied both electrically and optically using capacitance transient spectroscopy and low temperature photoluminescence. Photoluminescence measurements show that several lines, normally detected after electron irradiation, have almost or entirely disappeared by recombination enhanced annealing at room temperature. From capacitance transient measurements, the annealing enhancement is found to be largest for the HS2 hole trap, while the EH1 and EH3 electron traps also anneal out by recombination enhanced reaction but at a lower rate.

We applied picosecond four-wave mixing technique to investigate carrier diffusion and recombination in n-type 4H-SiC epilayers. The dependence of bipolar diffusion coefficient D on photocarrier density was measured in range from ~ 1017 to ~ 1020 cm-3. We determined a decrease of D value from 3.4 to 2.2 cm2/s with increase of the photoexcitation level in range from ~ 1017 to ~ 1019 cm-3, and found its increase up to 3.8 cm2/s at carrier density above 1020 cm-3. Auger recombination governed decrease of carrier lifetime from 11 ns at ~ 1017 cm-3 to 1.8 ns at ~ 1020 cm- 3 has also been observed.

The Hot-Wall CVD reactor was developed for the thick epitaxial SiC layers needed for high voltage power devices but its inherent better properties – better cracking efficiency of the precursor gases and better lateral and vertical temperature homogeneity – should also influence the growth of other materials such as the III-nitrides. We will give some examples of thick SiC layers grown on either off- or on-axis substrates with this technique. We will also show that high-quality III-nitride materials can be grown.

Not Available

Not Available

Not Available

Not Available

Not Available

Not Available

Not Available

Not Available