Surface Effects of Passivation within Mo/4H-SiC Schottky Diodes through MOS Analysis

Abstract

Passivation treatments applied prior to Mo metallisation on Silicon Carbide (SiC) Schottky rectifier and metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) structures are studied. A control sample and two treatments, comprising of an O2 oxidation and a phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) deposition, were studied. Electrical characterisation results show that P2O5 treatment improves the homogeneity of the diodes, with the ideality factor reducing to 1.02 and the leakage current reducing by three orders of magnitude to 2×10-5 A/cm2. Furthermore, the SBH was lowered by 0.11 eV and the variance of all the P2O5 treated Schottky characteristics over the batch reduced. Characterisation by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showed that the stoichiometry, the Si:C ratio, of the SiC below the contact increased from 0.93:1 before treatment to 0.97:1 after P2O5 treatment.