Effect of Surface Orientation and Off-Angle on Surface Roughness and Electrical Properties of p-Type Impurity Implanted 4H-SiC Substrate after High Temperature Annealing

We investigate the effect of surface orientation and off-angle for Al-implanted 4H-SiC samples after high temperature annealing. The samples are obtained from a 4H-SiC (0001) substrate 8° off-angled (Si-face 8°off), and (000-1) substrates 8° (C-face 8°off), 4° (C-face 4°off) and less than 1° off-angled (C-face ~1°off). An n-type epitaxial layer is deposited on all substrates. Multiple implantations of Al+ (30~200keV) are carried out at 600°C. The total dose is 8.6 × 1015 cm-2. The Al-implanted samples are annealed in Ar ambient at 1580°C, 1700°C and 1800°C for 30s using the hybrid super rapid thermal annealing (HS-RTA) equipment. In this study, sheet resistance (Rs), free carrier concentration (Ns), Hall mobility (μ) and root-mean square roughness (Rrms) are used to evaluate the Al-implanted samples after high temperature annealing. Rs for all Al-implanted samples after annealing at 1800°C for 30s is around 18k/. Rrms for the Al-implanted C-face samples after annealing at 1800°C increases with increasing off-angle. Rrms for the Al-implanted Si-face 8°off sample after annealing increases with annealing temperature. Rrms for the C-face ~1°off Al-implanted sample after annealing at 1800°C is lower than that for the Si-face 8°off Al-implanted sample after annealing at 1700°C, moreover Rs for the C-face ~1°off sample after annealing at 1800°C is about 10% of that for the Si-face 8°off Al-implanted sample after annealing at 1700°C. It is shown that the C-face ~1°off sample is useful to fabricate a p+ region with low Rs and low Rrms. If C-face 4H-SiC is used to fabricate devices, devices made on C-face 4H-SiC with low off angle are expected to decrease any problems caused by increase of surface roughness after high temperature annealing (~1800°C).