Silicon carbide has been proposed as an excellent material for high-frequency, high-power and high-temperature electronics. High power and high frequency applications have been pursued for quite some time in SiC with a great deal of success in terms of demonstrated devices. However, self-heating problems due to the much higher power densities that result when ten times higher electrical fields are used inside the devices needs to be addressed. High-temperature electronics has not yet experienced as much attention and success, possibly because there is no immediate market. This paper will review some of the advances that have been made in high-temperature electronics using silicon carbide, starting from process technology, continuing with device design, and finishing with circuit examples. For process technology, one of the biggest obstacles is long-term stable contacts. Several device structures have been electrically characterized at high temperature (BJTs and FETs) and will be compared to surface temperature measurements and physical device simulation. Finally some proposed circuit topologies as well as novel solutions will be presented.

We report on the integration of ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) thin films on 4H-silicon carbide and their electrical properties. The structures of metal-ferroelectric-(insulator)-semiconductor MF(I)S and metal-ferroelectric-metal-insulator-semiconductor MFMIS have been fabricated and characterized. The MFMIS structures of Au/PZT/Pt/Ti/SiO2/SiC have shown fully saturated P-E hysteresis loops with remnant polarization Pr =14.2μC/cm2 and coercive field Ec = 58.9 kV/cm. The MFIS structures exhibited stable capacitance-voltage C-V loops with low conductance (<0.1 mS/cm2, tan d ∼ 0.0007 at 12 V, 400kHz) and memory window as wide as 10 V, when a 5 nm-thick Al2O3 was used as a high bandgap (Eg ∼ 9eV) barrier buffer layer between PZT (Eg ∼ 3.5eV) and SiC (Eg ∼ 3.2eV). Both structures on n- and p- SiC have shown electrical properties promising for the application to the gate stacks for the SiC field-effect transistors (FETs) and the design and process issues on different types of the metal-ferroelectric-silicon carbide field-effect transistors (FETs) have also been proposed.

A number of F2-based plasma chemistries (NF3, SF6, PF5 and BF3) were investigated for high rate etching of SiC. The most advantageous of these is SF6, based on the high rate (0.6 μm · min−1) it achieves and its relatively low cost compared to NF3. The changes in electrical properties of the near-surface region are relatively minor when the incident ion energy is kept below approximately 75 eV. At a process pressure of 5 mTorr, the SiC etch rate falls-off by ∼15 % in 30 μm diameter via holes compared to larger diameter holes (> 60 μm diameter) or open areas on the mask.

Epitaxial TiC Ohmic and Schottky contacts to 4H-SiC were formed by a new deposition method, UHV co-evaporation with Ti and C60, at low temperature (< 500°C). We achieved a contact resistivity of 2 × 10−5Δcm2 at 25°C for as deposited Ohmic contacts on Al ion implanted 4H-Silicon carbide. The rectifying behavior of TiC Schottky contacts was also investigated using I-V and C-V. The measured Schottky barrier height (SBH) was 1.26 eV for n-type and 1.65 eV for p-type 4H-SiC using C-V measurements for frequencies ranging from 1kHz to 1MHz. LEED, RBS, XPS, and XRD measurements were performed to analyze composition ratio, interface reaction, and structural properties of the TiC epitaxial layer.

In the present work, we investigated sputtered titanium tungsten (TiW) contacts for Ohmic contacts to both n- and p-type 4H-SiC with long-term stability under high temperature (500°C).. Epitaxial layers with a doping concentration of 1.3×1019 and 6×1018 cm−3 were used. After high temperature annealing (>950°C) sputtered TiW contacts showed Ohmic behavior with good uniform distribution of the specific contact resistance. We obtained an average specific contact resistance (pc) of 4×10−5 Ωcm2 and 1.2 ∼ 1.7×10−4 Ωcm2 for p- and n-type, respectively from linear TLM measurement. We also found some variation of the specific contact resistance and the sheet resistance from our TLM measurement for p-type contacts. We will discuss this behavior with the measurement of SIMS. Long-term stability with a top-cap layer is also discussed

A parametric study of the etching characteristics of 6H p+ and n+ SiC and thin film SiC0.8N0.2 in Inductively Coupled Plasma NF3/O2 and NF3/Ar discharges has been performed. The etch rates in both chemistries increase monotonically with NF3 percentage and rf chuck power reaching 3500Å·min−1 for SiC and 7500 Å·min−1 for SiCN. The etch rates go through a maximum with increasing ICP source power, which is explained by a trade-off between the increasing ion flux and the decreasing ion energy. The anisotropy of the etched features is also a function of ion flux, ion energy and atomic fluorine neutral concentration. Indium-tinoxide( ITO) masks display relatively good etch selectivity over SiC(maximum of 70:1) while photoresist etches more rapidly than SiC. The surface roughness of SiC is essentially independent of plasma composition for NF3/O2 discharges, while extensive surface degradation occurs for SiCN under high NF3:O2 conditions. The high ion flux available in the ICP tool allows etching even at very low dc self-biases, ≤ −10V, leading to very low damage pattern transfer.

Epitaxial titanium carbide is investigated as a low resistivity, high temperature stable Ohmic and Schottky contact to 4H and 6H SiC. The titanium carbide films were deposited at 500°C using co-evaporation of titanium (e-beam) and C60 (Knudsen cell) in a UHV system. Schottky diodes and TLM structures were fabricated on low and high doped SiC material respectively. The samples were annealed at 700 °C in a vacuum furnace, and electrical measurements were performed up to 300 °C.

A number of different plasma chemistries, including NF3/O2, SF6/O2 , SF6/Ar, ICI, IBr, Cl2/Ar, BCl3/Ar and CH4/H2/Ar, have been investigated for dry etching of 6H and 3C-SiC in a Inductively Coupled Plasma tool. Rates above 2,000 Å·cm−1 are found with fluorine-based chemistries at high ion currents. Surprisingly, Cl2-based etching does not provide high rates, even though the potential etch products (SiCl4 and CCl4 ) are volatile. Photoresist masks have poor selectivity over SiC in F2 - based plasmas under normal conditions, and ITO or Ni are preferred.

Undoped single crystalline aluminum nitride films were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) at 1200 °C. The precursors used were trimethylaluminium (TMA) and ammonia (NH3) in a hydrogen carrier flow, at a pressure of 10 Torr. Silicon carbide substrates of the 4H or the 6H polytype with an epilayer on the silicon face, were used to grow the 200 nm thick A1N films. Aluminum was evaporated and subsequently patterned to form MIS capacitors for high frequency (400 kHz) capacitance voltage measurements at room temperature. It was possible to measure the structure and characterize accumulation, depletion and deep depletion. However, it was not possible to invert the low doped SiC epilayer at room temperature. From an independent optical thickness measurement the relative dielectric constant of aluminum nitride was calculated to be 8.4. The films were stressed up to 50 Volts (2.5 MV/cm) without breakdown or excessive leakage currents. These results indicate the possibility to replace silicon dioxide with aluminum nitride in SiC field effect transistors.