Infrared photoinduced force near-field spectroscopy of silicon carbide

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a promising microelectronic semiconductor with an infrared response that depends on factors such as polytype, growth conditions, and structuring. Recent advances in infrared nano-imaging techniques provide new opportunities to characterize thin films at the nanoscale. We performed tip-enhanced near-field spectral characterization on various 4H-SiC sample surfaces using photoinduced force microscopy (PiFM). The near-field spectra feature a peak associated with a surface phonon polariton (SPhP) resonance, which proves to be highly sensitive to the material’s surface quality. Interestingly, we found that the power absorption at the tip-sample junction, enhanced by the effective tip polarizability, can account for these PiFM spectra, resulting in a blend of both dispersive and dissipative spectral line shapes. As a potential application, a junction-field effect transistor was imaged to evaluate the technique’s ability to map the surface of different p- and n-doped areas, demonstrating high sensitivity and spatial resolution compared to Raman analysis.