Growth and processing of heteroepitaxial 3C-SiC films for electronic devices applications
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Growth and processing of heteroepitaxial 3C-SiC films for electronic devices applications A. Severino1,2, M.Mauceri1, R.Anzalone2, A.Canino1,2, N.Piluso1,2, C.Vecchio1, M.Camarda1,2, F.La Via2 1
Epitaxial Technology Center, ETC srl, 16° strada, Blocco Torre Allegra, 95121, Catania, Italy 2 CNR-IMM, sezione di Catania, VIII Strada 5, 95121, Catania, Italy
ABSTRACT 3C-SiC is very attractive due the chance to be grown on large-area, low-cost Si substrates. Moreover, 3C-SiC has higher channel electron mobility with respect to 4H-SiC, interesting property in MOSFET applications. Other application fields where 3C-SiC can play a significant role are solar cells and MEMS-based sensors. In this work, we present a general overview of 3C-SiC growth on Si substrate. The influence of growth parameters, such as the growth rate, on the crystal quality of 3C-SiC films is discussed. The main issue for 3C-SiC development is the reduction of the stacking fault density, which shows an exponential decreasing trend with the film thickness tending to a saturation value of about 1000 cm-1. Some aspect of processing will be also faced with the realization of cantilever for Young modulus calculations and the implantation of Al ions for the study of damaging and recovery of the 3CSiC crystal. INTRODUCTION Many attractive mechanical and electrical properties make silicon carbide (SiC) a material of interest in both electronic devices and sensors for nowadays technology (sustainable energies, hybrid vehicles, low power loss inverters). Silicon carbide exists in nature in several crystalline structures, called polytypes, differentiated by the stacking sequence of the tetrahedrally bonded Si-C bilayers.1,2 Different polytypes have widely ranging physical properties. For instance, 3C-SiC shows the highest electron mobility and saturation velocity, because of the reduced phonon scattering resulting from a higher symmetry, while its band gap energy is the lowest (2.3 eV).3,4 Furthermore, cubic silicon carbide (3C-SiC) is the thermodynamically more stable polytype amongst all of the silicon carbide crystals and, hence, it can be grown at lower temperatures (i.e. below 1500 °C). This stability at lower temperature is both a limitation and an advantage for 3C-SiC development. The drawback arises from the reduced thermal budget required for its growth that limits the development for a reliable 3C-SiC bulk growth technology which would allow the realization of the seed for the subsequent homoepitaxial growth in order to obtain device-grade 3C-SiC epilayers. The lack of such a substrate forces to grow 3C-SiC hetero-epitaxially on different substrates. Many attempts have been made in optimizing the heteroepitaxial growth of 3C-SiC on hexagonal polytypes (both 6Hand 4H-SiC) 5,6 but the manufacturing costs are too high and substrate sizes still limited. An important technological and scientific breakthrough would be growing high-quality 3C-SiC epilayers on a substrate with an area as large as possible, i.e. on silicon. This is the main reason why silicon i
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