Investigation of damage behaviour and isolation effect of n-type 6H-SiC by implantation of oxygen

Silicon carbide is an important wide-band-gap semiconductor for high temperature, high-voltage, high-power and high-frequency devices. Electrical isolation is an important aspect for device applications. In this report, oxygen ions, 70 keV with doses ranging from 5 × 10¹³ to 5 × 10¹⁵ cm^-2, have been implanted into n-type 6H-SiC to investigate the possibility of forming a high-resistive layer. The damage behaviour and internal stress were checked by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy and channeling, and an x-ray rocking curve, respectively. Atomic force microscope observations revealed that the surface morphology is quite sensitive to the implantation even at a dose of 1 × 10¹⁴ cm^-2. After annealing in nitrogen at 1200°C, no remarkable damage recovery could be seen if the deposit damage energy is over the critical value. Schottky structures of Au/SiC have been fabricated on the annealed samples and I-V curves of metal/SiC/InGeNi were measured at room temperature at both forward and reverse bias; the electrical isolation effect was observed at proper implantation dosages. The results indicated that there exists a dose window for electrical isolation.