4H-silicon carbide-dielectric interface recombination analysis using free carrier absorption

Abstract

In this paper, an alternative method to characterize the interface between 4H polytype of Silicon Carbide (4H-SiC) and passivating dielectric layers is established. The studies are made on dielectric-semiconductor test structures using Al2O3 as dielectric on 4H-SiC n-type epitaxial layers. Samples with different pre- and post-dielectric deposition preparations have been fabricated on epilayers of varying thicknesses. Effective lifetimes (τeff) of all the samples were measured by an optical pump-probe method utilizing free carrier absorption (FCA) to analyse the influence of the 4H-SiC/dielectric interface on charge carrier recombination. The relative contribution to τeff from the surfaces increases with decreasing epilayer thickness, and by analysing the data in combination with numerical modelling, it is possible to extract values of the surface recombination velocities (SRVs) for interfaces prepared in different ways. For instance, it is found that SRV for a standard cleaning procedure is 2 × 106 cm/s compared to a more elaborate RCA process, yielding a more than 50 times lower value of 3.5 × 104 cm/s. Furthermore, the density of interface traps (Dit) is extracted from capacitance-voltage (CV) measurements using the Terman method and a comparison is made between the SRV extracted from FCA measurements and Dits extracted from CV measurements on the same structures fabricated with metal contacts. It is observed that the SRV increase scales linearly with the increase in Dit. The strong qualitative correlation between FCA and CV data shows that FCA is a useful characterization technique, which can also yield more quantitative information about the charge carrier dynamics at the interface.