This paper presents the results of unintentionally doped 4H-SiC epilayers grown on n-type Si-faced 4H-SiC substrates with 8° off-axis toward the [1120] direction by low pressure horizontal hot-wall chemical vapour deposition. Growth temperature and pressure are 1580 ℃ and 10^4 Pa, respectively. Good surface morphology of the sample is observed using atomic force microscopy （AFM） and scanning electron microscopy （SEM）. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy （FTIR） and x-ray diffraction （XRD） are used to characterize epitaxial layer thickness and the structural quality of the films respectively. The carrier concentration in the unintentional 4H-SiC homoepitaxial layer is about 6.4×10^14 cm^-3 obtained by C-V measurements. Schottky barrier diodes （SBDs） are fabricated on the epitaxial wafer in order to verify the quality of the wafer and to obtain information about the correlation between background impurity and electrical properties of the devices. Ni and Ti/4H-SiC Schottky barrier diodes with very good performances were obtained and their ideality factors are 1.10 and 1.05 respectively.
First, electronic structures of perfect wurtzite 4H-SiC were calculated by using first-principle ultra-soft pseudopotential approach of the plane wave based on the density functional theory; and the structure changes, band structures, and density of states were studied. Then the defect energy level of carbon vacancy in band gap was examined by substituting the carbon in 4H-SiC with carbon vacancy. The calculated results indicate the new defect energy level generated by the carbon vacancy, and its location in the band gap in 4H-SiC, which has the character of deep acceptor. A proper explanation for green luminescence in 4H-SiC is given according to the calculated results which are in good agreement with our measurement results.
This paper investigates the current-voltage （I-V） characteristics of Al/Ti/4H-SiC Schottky barrier diodes （SBDs） in the temperature range of 77 K-500 K, which shows that Al/Ti/4H SiC SBDs have good rectifying behaviour. An abnormal behaviour, in which the zero bias barrier height decreases while the ideality factor increases with decreasing temperature （T）, has been successfully interpreted by using thermionic emission theory with Gaussian distribution of the barrier heights due to the inhomogeneous barrier height at the A1/Ti/4H-SiC interface. The effective Richardson constant A＊ = 154 A/cm2 . K2 is determined by means of a modified Richardson plot In（I0/T2） - （qσ）2/2（κT）2 versus q/kT, which is very close to the theoretical value 146 A/cm2 · K2.
3C-SiC heteroepitaxial layers were grown on Si substrates using a horizontal,hot-wall low pressure chemical vapor deposition system.The crystal quality,surface morphology and thickness uniformity of the layers were characterized by X-ray diffraction,atomic force microcopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy,respectively.Growth of the epitaxial layer was determined to follow a three-dimensional island mode initially and then switch to a step-flow mode as the growth time increases.
CHEN Da ZHANG YuMing ZHANG YiMen WANG YueHu JIA RenXu
