Silicon carbide is a very promising semiconductor material for high-power, highrequency, and high-temperature applications. SiC distinguishes from traditional narrow bandgap semiconductors, such as silicon, in that common doping impurities in SiC have activation energies larger than the thermal energy kT even at room temperature. This causes incomplete ionization of such impurities, which leads to strong temperature and frequency dependence of the semiconductor junction differential admittance and, if carrier freeze-out effects are not taken into account, errors in doping profiles calculated from capacitance-voltage data. Approaches commonly used to study the influence of incomplete impurity ionization on the junction admittance are based on the truncated space charge approximation and/or the small-signal approximation. The former leads to impurity ionization time constant and occupation number errors, while the latter fails if the measurement ac signal amplitude is larger than kT/q. In this work, a new reverse bias Schottky junction admittance model valid for the general case of an arbitrary temperature, measurement signal frequency and amplitude, and doping occupation number and time constant distributions is developed. Results of junction admittance calculations using the developed model are compared with the results of traditional models. Based on the general model, a new method of admittance spectroscopy data analysis is created and used to determine impurity parameters more accurately than allowed by traditional approaches. Incomplete impurity ionization is investigated for the case of nitrogen donors and aluminum and boron acceptors in 4H- and 6H-SiC. It is shown that the degree of carrier freeze-out is significant in heavily N-doped 6H-SiC and in Al- and B-doped SiC. Frequency dispersion of the junction admittance is shown to be significant at room temperature in N- and B-doped SiC. Junction capacitance calculations as a function of applied dc bias show that calculated doping profiles deviate from the actual impurity concentration profiles if the impurity ionization time constant is comparable with the ac signal period. This is the case for N- and B-doped SiC with certain values of the impurity activation energy and capture cross-section. Validity of the new model and its predictions are successfully tested on experimental admittance data for N- and B-doped SiC Schottky diodes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-3704 |
| Date | 12 May 2001 |
| Creators | Los, Andrei |
| Publisher | Scholars Junction |
| Source Sets | Mississippi State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
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