Papers by Author: Byoung Chul Shin

Abstract: The chlorinated precursor is recently focused for high growth rate and high quality epitaxial layer. In the previous studies, the addition of chlorinated species from Si2Cl6 in the gas phase eliminated simultaneous Si nucleation which interferes with epitaxy. In this work, the characterization of epitaxial layers grown with chlorinated species is focused. High growth rate of 30 μm/h was achieved by using Si2(CH3)6 and Si2Cl6 as chlorinated precursors. We concluded that high growth rate was achieved by using HMDS and HCDS as the precursor of SiC at growth temperature of 1600 °C.

Abstract: We adopted HMDS(Hexamethyledisilane) as a SiC(Silicon carbide) source material for epitaxial growth of 3C-SiC on Si substrate. Various growth profiles were investigated to optimize hetero-epitaxial growth of 3C-SiC layers. We also focused on the homogeneous film deposition of 3C-SiC on Si by employing two susceptor shapes, flat and tilted susceptors, to control a thickness of the boundary layer formed on the Si substrate. Fringe color patterns were observed on 3C-SiC layer on Si and hence it was easy to characterize the film uniformity by analyzing this color. 3C-SiC epitaxial layers were systematically analyzed by an optical microscope, a Raman spectroscopy, a SEM and an XRD.

Abstract: The single crystal ingots by using a sublimation technique were grown on 6H-SiC dual-seed crystals with opposite face polarities and then SiC crystal wafers sliced from the SiC ingot were systematically investigated to find out the polarity dependence of the crystal quality. The growth rate of the SiC crystal grown in this study was about 0.2mm/hr. N-type 2’’ SiC crystals exhibiting the 4H- and 6H-SiC polytype were successfully fabricated on C-face and Si-face, respectively. The incorporation of nitrogen donors in the SiC crystals grown on the C-face seed crystal was exhibited to be higher than in SiC crystals grown on a Si-face crystal. When the SiC crystal ingot proceeded to grow, the SiC crystal region grown on the C-face seed crystal was enlarged compared to the SiC crystal region on the Si-face seed crystal.

Abstract: Extensive study of various process parameters to influence on the growth of 4H-SiC crystal has been carried out using the transformation of the 6H-SiC seed by a PVT method. The axial temperature gradients were increased throughout increasing the crucible length along growth direction in order to enhance the growth rate and transformed crystal yield. The N2/Ar gas ratio used during the crystal growth related with carrier concentration/mobility of grown crystal. In the initial stage of growth, foreign polytypes such as 6H/15R were observed on 6H-SiC seed crystal but 4H crystals were entirely grown after the process optimization. While the typical absorption spectrum of SiC seed crystal indicated that the SiC polytype was the 6H-SiC with fundamental absorption energy of about 3.02eV, absorption spectrum of grown SiC crystal exhibited 4H-SiC with fundamental absorption energy of about 3.26eV. The entirely transformed SiC region exhibited lower micropipe density than 6H/4H transition region.

Abstract: The present research was focused to produce 2 inch wafers from small rectangular seeds and to investigate the quality of non-polar SiC substrates grown by a conventional PVT method. The non-polar SiC seeds were prepared by cutting along <0001> direction of 6H-SiC crystal grown on (0001) basal plane. As SiC ingot grows, many defects in connected region were gradually diminished. While the full width at half maximum (FWHM) values of m-plane SiC substrate measured along a-direction and c-direction were 60 arcsec and 70 arcsec, respectively, and the FWHM values of a-plane SiC substrate measured along m-direction and c-direction were 27 arcsec and 31 arcsec respectively. The stacking faults lying in the basal plane can be detected by molten KOH etching as linear etch pits extending along <0001> on the (11-20) surface and the carrier concentration was observed by Raman spectrum.

Abstract: GaN epitaxial layers were grown on sapphire substrate deposited an aluminum (Al) buffer layer using a hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) system with a two-zone resistance furnace. A 10nm-thick Al buffer layer was prepared by an e-beam evaporation in order to reduce the stress resulted from thermal mismatch between the GaN layer and the substrate. The growth temperature and growth rate for GaN epitaxial layer were 1050oC and 40 m/hr, respectively. GaN epitaxial layer grown on substrate with Al buffer layer exhibited uniform and smooth morphology on 2-inch whole substrate and a bow value of 33.5 m. The addition of Al-buffer layer apparently reduced the full width at half maximum (FWHM) value of GaN layer, which indicated the improvement of crystal quality.

Abstract: The effect of slurry composition and wafer flatness on a material removal rate (MRR) and resulting surface roughness which are evaluation parameters to determine the CMP characteristics of the on-axis 6H-SiC substrate were systematically investigated. 10 x 10 mm2 6H-SiC substrates and 2-inch SiC wafers fabricated from the ingot grown by a conventional physical vapor transport (PVT) method are used for this study. The SiC substrate after the CMP process using slurry added oxidizers into slurry consisted of KOH-based colloidal silica and nano-size diamond particle exhibited the significant MRR value and a fine surface without any surface damages. SiC wafers having high bow value after the CMP process exhibited large variation in surface roughness value compared to wafer with low bow value. The CMP-processed SiC wafer having a low bow value of 10m was observed to result in the MRR value of 0.15 m/h and the mean height (Ra) value of 0.772Ǻ.

Abstract: Two SiC single crystal ingots were prepared using sublimation PVT techniques through the different process procedure and then their crystal quality was systematically compared, because the present research was focused to improve the quality of SiC crystal by modifying the initial stage of the PVT growth. Before the main growth step for growing SiC bulk crystal, initial stage period where growth rate was kept to relatively low rate of <10μm/h was introduced to conventional process procedure. N-type 2”-SiC single crystals exhibiting the polytype of 6H-SiC was successfully fabricated. As compared to the characteristics of SiC crystal grown using the conventional schedule, the quality of SiC crystal grown with modifying the initial stage was significantly improved, exhibiting decrease of defect formation such as micropipe and polytype formation.

Abstract: A sublimation epitaxial method, referred to as the Closed Space Technique (CST) was adopted to produce AlN epitaxial layers. In this study, we report the surface morphology of AlN epitaxial layer grown on various substrates such as 3C-SiC (100), 4H-SiC (0001) with 8o off-axis (0001) plane tilted toward the <11 2 0> direction and on-axis 4H-SiC (0001). An average growth rate of AlN layer at 2350oC in 500 Torr of N2 was measured to be about 6μm/hr. While AlN layer grown on the 3C-SiC (100) substrate at 2350oC exhibited polycrystalline structure, AlN epitaxial layer grown on on-axis and off-axis 4H-SiC (0001) substrates had highly c-axis oriented epitaxial structure. In particular, the stacked structure of hexagonal plates was observed on off-axis substrate and the size of the hexagonal plates increased with growth time. Hexagonal plates were observed to be coalesced and the step-bunching was finally disappeared.

Abstract: 2inch 6H-SiC (0001) wafers were sliced from the ingot grown by a conventional physical vapor transport (PVT) method using an abrasive multi-wire saw. While sliced SiC wafers lapped by a slurry with 1~9㎛ diamond particles had a mean height (Ra) value of 40nm, wafers after the final mechanical polishing using the slurry of 0.1㎛ diamond particles exhibited Ra of 4Å. In this study, we focused on investigation into the effect of the slurry type of chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) on the material removal rate of SiC materials and the change in surface roughness by adding abrasives and oxidizer to conventional KOH-based colloidal silica slurry. The nano-sized diamond slurry (average grain size of 25nm) added in KOH-based colloidal silica slurry resulted in a material removal rate (MRR) of 0.07mg/hr and the Ra of 1.811Å. The addition of oxidizer (NaOCl) in the nano-size diamond and KOH based colloidal silica slurry was proven to improve the CMP characteristics for SiC wafer, having a MRR of 0.3mg/hr and Ra of 1.087Å.