Papers by Author: A. Firrincieli

Abstract: High growth rate of 4H-SiC epitaxial layers can be reached with the introduction of HCl in the deposition chamber. The effect of the Cl/Si ratio on this epitaxial growth process has been studied by optical and electrical measurements. Optical microscopy shows an improvement of the surface morphology and luminescence measurements reveal a decrease of epitaxial layer defects with increasing the Cl/Si ratio in the range 0.05–2.0. The leakage current measured on the diodes realized on these wafers is reduced of an order of magnitude and DLTS measurements show a decrease of the EH6,7 level concentration in the same range of Cl/Si ratio. The value Cl/Si=2.0 allows to grow epitaxial layers with the lowest defect concentration.

Abstract: The influence of the epitaxial layer growth parameters on the electrical characteristics of Schottky diodes has been studied in detail. Several diodes were manufactured on different epitaxial layers grown with different Si/H2 ratio and hence with different growth rates. From the electrical characterization a maximum silicon dilution ratio can be fixed at 0.04 %. This limit fixes also a maximum growth rate that can be obtained in the epitaxial growth, with this process, at about 8 μm/h. Several epitaxial layers have been grown, using this dilution ratio, with different temperatures (1550÷1650 °C). At 1600 °C the best compromise between the direct and the reverse characteristics has been found. With this process the yield decreases from 90% for a Schottky diode area of 0.25 mm2 to 61% for the 2 mm2 diodes. Optimizing the deposition process to reduce the defects introduced by the epitaxial process, yield of the order of 80% can be reached on 1 mm2 diodes.

Abstract: The growth rate of 4H-SiC epi layers has been increased by a factor 3 (up to 18μm/h) with respect to the standard process with the introduction of HCl in the deposition chamber. The epitaxial layers grown with the addition of HCl have been characterized by electrical, optical and structural characterization methods. An optimized process without the addition of HCl is reported for comparison. The Schottky diodes, manufactured on the epitaxial layer grown with the addition of HCl at 1600 °C, have electrical characteristics comparable with the standard epitaxial process with the advantage of an epitaxial growth rate three times higher.