First-principles investigation of the effects of excess carriers on the polytype stability and stacking fault energies of SiC

Abstract

The characteristic polytype behaviors of SiC and accompanying low stacking fault energies are known to cause engineering issues, including polytype inclusions and bipolar degradation. The dependence of the relative stability of SiC polytypes and stacking fault energies on excess carrier concentration was investigated using first-principles calculations. The relative energy of 2H-, 4H-, and 6H-SiC to 3C-SiC increased with the excess electrons over 2 × 1019 cm−3, while the energy variation with excess holes was small. The stacking fault energies in 4H-SiC also exhibited a significant decrease with excess electrons over 1.0 × 1019 cm−3, whereas this change was minor with excess holes. These excess carrier dependencies were attributed to variations in the bandgap between polytypes. The energy level of the excess electrons was at the conduction band minimum; this was lowest in 3C-SiC, which had the lowest bandgap energy. Consequently, the energy of 3C-SiC with excess electrons was lower than that of other polytypes. Conversely, the valence band maximum lacked electrons when excess holes were present, resulting in a small difference among the Fermi levels of the polytypes. Hence, the energy difference between the SiC polytypes was similar for excess holes. Similarly, the stacking faults in SiC exhibited quantum-well structures by incorporating other polytypes with different bandgaps. With excess electrons, the Fermi level within the stacking faults was lower than that in the bulk crystals. Consequently, the stacking fault energy decreased for the same reason that the energy in 3C-SiC decreased under excess electron conditions.