A Study on the Temperature of Ohmic Contact to p-Type SiC Based on Ti3SiC2Phase

Abstract

In this paper, the electrical properties of Ti3SiC2-based ohmic contacts formed on p-type 4H-SiC were studied. The growth of Ti3SiC2 thin films were studied onto 4H-SiC substrates by thermal annealing of Ti–Al layers deposited by magnetron sputtering. In this study, we varied the concentrations of Ti and Al (Ti20Al80, Ti30Al70, Ti50Al50, and Ti), and the annealing temperature from 900 °C to 1200 °C for each concentration. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy analyzes were performed on the samples to determine the microstructure of the annealed layers and to further investigate the compounds formed after annealing. Using the transfer length method structures, the specific contact resistance (SCR) at room temperature of all contacts was measured. The temperature dependence up to 600 °C of the SCR of the best contacts was studied to understand the current mechanisms at the Ti3SiC2/SiC interface. The experimental results are in agreement with the thermionic field emission theory. With this model, the barrier height of the contact varies between 0.71 and 0.85 eV. Finally, ageing tests showed that Ti3SiC2-based contacts were stable and reliable up to 400 h at 600 °C under Ar.