Effect of surface inhomogeneities on the electrical characteristics of SiC Schottky contacts

Author

Bhatnagar, Mohit ; Baliga, B. Jayant ; Kirk, H.R. ; Rozgonyi, G.A.

Author_Institution

Phoenix Corporate Res. Lab., Motorola Inc., Tempe, AZ, USA

Volume

43

Issue

1

fYear

1996

fDate

1/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

150

Lastpage

156

Abstract

This paper reports analysis of the role of defects on the electrical characteristics of high-voltage 6H-SiC Schottky rectifiers. The measured reverse leakage current of high-voltage Ti and Pt rectifiers was found to be much higher than that predicted by thermionic emission theory and using a barrier height extracted from the C-V measurements. In this paper, a model based upon the presence of defects at the 6H-SiC/metal interface is used to explains this behavior. It is proposed that these defects result in lowering of the barrier height in the localized regions and thus, significantly affect the reverse I-V characteristics of the Schottky contacts. The presence of electrically active defects in the Schottky barrier area has been verified by EBIC studies

Keywords

EBIC; Schottky barriers; Schottky diodes; leakage currents; platinum; semiconductor device models; semiconductor-metal boundaries; silicon compounds; solid-state rectifiers; titanium; wide band gap semiconductors; 6H-SiC Schottky rectifiers; EBIC studies; HV diodes; Pt contact; Pt-SiC; SiC/metal interface; Ti contact; Ti-SiC; barrier height lowering; electrical characteristics; electrically active defects; high-voltage rectifiers; localized regions; model; reverse I-V characteristics; reverse leakage current; surface inhomogeneities; Current measurement; Electric variables; Electron mobility; Kirk field collapse effect; Leakage current; Rectifiers; Schottky barriers; Schottky diodes; Silicon carbide; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/16.477606

Filename

477606