Investigation of Carrot Reduction Effect on 4H-Silicon Carbide Epitaxial Wafers with Optimized Buffer Layer

Abstract

We investigated the carrot-defect reduction effect by optimizing the buffer layers of 4H-Silion Carbide (SiC) epitaxial wafers. The SiC epitaxial wafer with the 0.5 μm-thick optimized condition-B buffer layer show the carrot-defect density of 0.13 cm-2, since that with the conventional-A buffer layer were 0.68 cm-2. Although the average bunching length with the optimized condition-B buffer layer was 7-times longer than those with the conventional condition-A buffer layer, we could reduce the bunching length by applying the optimized condition-B only to the initial 0.05 μm-thick buffer layer. Finally, with the initial 0.05 μm-thick optimized condition-B buffer layers, we could achieve the SiC epitaxial wafers with only half the carrot-defect densities of those with the conventional condition-A buffer layers, while the average bunching lengths were less than 100 μm. With this condition, we could achieve the estimated yield of 90.1% with 4 x 4 mm chips, while that with the conventional condition-A buffer layer was 81.9%.