20050407: A method to investigate small growth pits in Silicon
carbide epilayers
Silicon carbide (SiC) devices are fabricated on SiC epilayers which
are grown on SiC substrates. The defects contained in SiC epilayers
can be classified into crystallographic defects and surface
morphological defects.
Compared to the crystallographic defects in SiC, the existence of
sharp-apex small growth pits was revealed only a few years ago.
In order to improve the SiC device performance and fabrication
yield, the correlation between device performance and defects has
been extensively investigated in the past decade. Due to the lack of
effective characterization tools, the investigated
surface-morphologic defects influence on device performance were
limited to those with a relatively large size, which are usually
visible under a normal optical microscope. There were few efforts
that have been dedicated to investigate the influence of these
sharp-apex growth pits on SiC device.
In order to further understand the influence of the small growth
pits on SiC device performance, this study reports our follow-up
investigations on various growth pits associated different
crystallographic defects in SiC epilayers.
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Publication:
Investigation on small growth pits in 4H silicon carbide epilayers,
Journal of Crystal Growth,
Vol. 279, 2005: 425-432.
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Application note:
SiC epitaxial surface defect
characterization.
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