Charge trapping behavior and its origin in Al2O3/SiC MOS structure are investigated by analyzing the capacitance–voltage(C–V) hysteresis and the chemical composition of the interface. The C–V hysteresis is measured as a function of oxide thickness series for an Al2O3/SiC MIS capacitor. The distribution of the trapped charges, extracted from the C–V curves, is found to mainly follow a sheet charge model rather than a bulk charge model. Therefore, the electron injection phenomenon is evaluated by using linear fitting. It is found that most of the trapped charges are not distributed exactly at the interface but are located in the bulk of the Al2O3 layers, especially close to the border. Furthermore, there is no detectable oxide interface layer in the x-ray photoelectron spectroscope(XPS) and transmission electron microscope(TEM)measurements. In addition, Rutherford back scattering(RBS) analysis shows that the width of the Al2O3/SiC interface is less than 1 nm. It could be concluded that the charge trapping sites in Al2O3/SiC structure might mainly originate from the border traps in Al2O3 film rather than the interface traps in the interfacial transition layer.
The Ni/Ti/Ni multilayer ohmic contact properties on a 4H-SiC substrate and improved adhesion with the Ti/Au overlayer have been investigated. The best specific contact resistivity of 3.16 × 10^-5 Ω.cm^2 was obtained at 1050 ℃. Compared with Ni/SiC ohmic contact, the adhesion between Ni/Ti/Ni/SiC and the Ti/Au overlayer was greatly improved and the physical mechanism under this behavior was analyzed by using Raman spectroscopy and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy （EDS） measurement. It is shown that a Ti-carbide and Ni-silicide compound exist at the surface and there is no graphitic carbon at the surface of the Ni/Ti/Ni structure by Raman spectroscopy, while a large amount of graphitic carbon appears at the surface of the Ni/SiC structure, which results in its bad adhesion. Moreover, the interface of the Ni/Ti/Ni/SiC is improved compared to the interface of Ni/SiC.
We investigate the effects of NO annealing and forming gas （FG） annealing on the electrical properties of a SiO2/SiC interface by low-temperature conductance measurements. With nitrogen passivation, the density of interface states （DIT） is significantly reduced in the entire energy range, and the shift of flatband voltage, AVFB, is effectively suppressed to less than 0.4 V. However, very fast states are observed after NO annealing and the response frequencies are higher than 1 MHz at room temperature. After additional FG annealing, the DIT and AVFB are further reduced. The values of the DIT decrease to less than 1011 cm-2 eV- 1 for the energy range of Ec - ET 〉/0.4 eV. It is suggested that the fast states in shallow energy levels originated from the N atoms accumulating at the interface by NO annealing. Though FG annealing has a limited effect on these shallow traps, hydrogen can terminate the residual Si and C dangling bonds corresponding to traps at deep energy levels and improve the interface quality further. It is indicated that NO annealing in conjunction with FG annealing will be a better post-oxidation process method for high performance SiC MOSFETs.
Tung＇s model was used to analyze anomalies observed in Ti/Si C Schottky contacts. The degree of the inhomogeneous Schottky barrier after annealing at different temperatures is characterized by the ‘T0anomaly＇ and the difference（△Φ）between the uniformly high barrier height（Φ0B） and the effective barrier height（Φeff B）. Those two parameters of Ti Schottky contacts on 4H–Si C were deduced from I–V measurements in the temperature range of 298 K–503 K. The increase in Schottky barrier（SB） height（ΦB） and decrease in the ideality factor（n） with an increase measurement temperature indicate the presence of an inhomogeneous SB. The degree of inhomogeneity of the Schottky barrier depends on the annealing temperature, and it is at its lowest for 500-°C thermal treatment. The degree of inhomogeneity of the SB could reveal effects of thermal treatments on Schottky contacts in other aspects.
