Demonstration of High Quality 4H-SiC Epitaxial Growth with Extremely Low Basal Plane Dislocation Density

Abstract

SiC epitaxial layer with low basal plane dislocation (BPD) density of 0.2/cm2 was successfully grown under higher C/Si ratio, which is found on the investigation about growth conditions. In order to study conversion mechanism of BPDs to threading edge dislocations (TEDs), angles between directions of BPD lines on a substrate and that of moving edges of steps ([11-2) during growth were examined. Consequently, it was revealed that almost 98% of BPDs are converted to TEDs for the case of the absolute angles above 45°. This high conversion ratio is considered to be induced by enhanced lateral growth under the higher C/Si ratio condition.