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Impact of Post-Deposition Annealing on Electrical Properties of RF-Sputtered Cu2O/4H-SiC and NiO/4H-SiC PiN Diodes

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Abstract

This study investigated the impact of the post-deposition annealing (PDA) process on the material and electrical properties of copper oxide (Cu2O) and nickel oxide (NiO) thin films deposited on a silicon carbide (SiC) substrate. Through radiofrequency (RF) sputtering, these films were subjected to PDA in a nitrogen (N2) and oxygen (O2) gas environment. Remarkably, the Cu2O films resisted phase transition following the N2 PDA process but exhibited a transition to cupric oxide (CuO) after undergoing the O2 PDA process. The symmetry of Cu 2p in the as-deposited Cu2O film was excellent; however, the phase-transformed CuO films exhibited an increase in binding energy and the emergence of satellite peaks. The Ni 2p exhibited various defects, such as nickel vacancies (VNi) and interstitial oxygen (Oi), in response to the different PDA atmospheres. The rectification ratios of the N2-annealed Cu2O and NiO devices were determined as 1.50 × 107 and 4.01 × 106, respectively, signifying a substantial enhancement by a factor of approximately 789 for the Cu2O/SiC device and 124 for the NiO/SiC device relative to their non-annealed counterparts. The findings of this study indicate that meticulous control of deposition for potential p-type materials such as Cu2O and NiO can significantly improve the performance in applications involving high-throughput and low-cost electronics.

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Data Availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Support from the Fostering Global Talents for Innovative Growth Program of the KIAT (P0017308), the Next-Generation Power Semiconductor Development of the KEIT (RS-2022-00154720), and a research grant provided by Kwangwoon University in 2023, made this work possible.

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  1. Department of Electronic Materials Engineering, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, Republic of South Korea

    Hyung-Jin Lee, Soo-Young Moon & Sang-Mo Koo

  2. Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Kung-Yen Lee

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H-JL: Conceptualization; investigation; writing–original draft; visualization. S-YM: Formal analysis; data curation. K-YL: Writing–review & editing; supervision. S-MK: Writing–review & editing; supervision; project administration; funding acquisition.

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Lee, HJ., Moon, SY., Lee, KY. et al. Impact of Post-Deposition Annealing on Electrical Properties of RF-Sputtered Cu2O/4H-SiC and NiO/4H-SiC PiN Diodes. Electron. Mater. Lett. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13391-024-00484-1

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