M-Center in Low-Dose Proton Implanted 4H-SiC; Bistability and Change in Emission Rate

Abstract

Electrically active point defects in semiconductor materials are important because they strongly affect material properties like effective doping concentration and charge carrier lifetimes. This thesis presents results on point defects introduced by ion implantation in silicon and silicon carbide. The defects have mainly been studied by deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) which is a quantitative, electrical characterization method highly suitable for point defect studies. The method is based on measurements of capacitance transients and both standard DLTS and new applications of the technique have been used. In silicon, a fundamental understanding of diffusion phenomena, like room-temperature migration of point defects and transient enhanced diffusion (TED), is still incomplete. This thesis presents new results which brings this understanding a step closer. In the implantation-based experimental method used to measure point defect migration at room temperature, it has been difficult to separate the effects of defect migration and ion channeling. For various reasons, the effect of channeling has so far been disregarded in this type of experiments. Here, a very simple method to assess the amount of channeling is presented, and it is shown that channeling dominates in our experiments. It is therefore recommended that this simple test for channeling is included in all such experiments. This thesis also contains a detailed experimental study on the defect distributions of vacancy and interstitial related damage in ion implanted silicon. Experiments show that interstitial related damage is positioned deeper (0.4 um or more) than vacancy related damage. A physical model to explain this is presented. This study is important to the future modeling of transient enhanced diffusion. Furthermore, the point defect evolution in low-fluence implanted 4H-SiC is investigated, and a large number of new defect levels has been observed. Many of these levels change or anneal out at temperatures below 300 C, which is not in accordance with the general belief that point defect diffusion in SiC requires high temperatures. This thesis also includes an extensive study on a metastable defect which we have observed for the first time and labeled the M-center. The defect is characterized with respect to DLTS signatures, reconfiguration barriers, kinetics and temperature interval for annealing, carrier capture cross sections, and charge state identification. A detailed configuration diagram for the M-center is presented.