Electrical challenges of heteroepitaxial 3C-SiC on silicon

Publication Type:
Conference Proceeding
Citation:
Materials Science Forum, 2018, 924 MSF pp. 297 - 301
Issue Date:
2018-01-01
Full metadata record
© 2018 Trans Tech Publications, Switzerland. We have investigated the electrical conduction in epitaxial cubic silicon carbide films on low-doped and high-resistive silicon substrates. The electrical properties of the film/substrate system such as the carrier concentration, carrier mobility, and sheet resistance were evaluated by performing Hall measurements in a van der Pauw configuration at room temperature. For the SiC on low-doped p-Si, we found that the charge carriers in the substrate always dominate the electrical conduction indicating an electrical shorting of the film to the substrate and the absence of a p/n junction. Meanwhile, for the SiC films grown on high-resistive silicon, we found an evidence of current leakage through a silicon region right below the SiC/Si interface, generated upon SiC growth. Leakage resistances in the kΩ range obtained from TLM structures made of isolated SiC pillars on high-resistive silicon confirmed the presence of a conductive region below the SiC/Si interface. This work also shows that this electrical leakage can be supressed using a high-resistive silicon as the substrate and etching away the conductive region below the interface.
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