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Interfacial modification mechanism of ALD-SiO2/4H-SiC heterojunction by synergistic nitrogen–oxygen-atmosphere RTA

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Abstract

In this work, the interfacial modification of the ALD-SiO2/4H-SiC heterojunction with synergistic nitrogen–oxygen-atmosphere (N2/O2) rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and its physical mechanism have been systematically studied. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) can effectively suppress the carbon clusters generation at the SiO2/4H-SiC heterojunction interface and RTA in the synergistic N2/O2 can further reduce the interface states density, the near-interface-oxide-trap (NIOT) density and the leakage current. Oxygen can repair carbon-related defects, and nitrogen helps passivate carbon-related traps and dangling bonds. The synergistic N2/O2 RTA can enhance the interfacial passivation efficiency by converting sp3 carbon clusters into sp2 phases. These demonstrate that the proposed synergistic N2/O2 RTA associated with SiO2 deposition by ALD is a potential way to substitute the conventional toxic nitrous oxides annealing and high-budget thermal oxidation, which promotes the property and reliability of SiC devices.

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

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2022YFB3604300, 2022YFB3604301), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11705263), Shanghai Rising-Star Program (21QA1410900), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Grant Nos. 20501110900 and 20501110800) and Shanghai Sailing Program (Grant No. 20YF1456700).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Microelectronic Research and Development Center, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Feiqing Huang & Limin Yan

  2. State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Shanghai, 200050, China

    Feiqing Huang, Li Zheng, Xinhong Cheng, Jianhao Huang & Zhongyu Liu

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  1. Feiqing Huang
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  2. Li Zheng
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  3. Xinhong Cheng
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  4. Limin Yan
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  5. Jianhao Huang
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Correspondence to Li Zheng or Xinhong Cheng.

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Huang, F., Zheng, L., Cheng, X. et al. Interfacial modification mechanism of ALD-SiO2/4H-SiC heterojunction by synergistic nitrogen–oxygen-atmosphere RTA. Appl. Phys. A 128, 1132 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-022-06280-8

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