The development of SiC wafers with properties suitable for electronic device fabrication is now well established commercially. A critical issue for developing metal–oxide–semiconductor field effect transistor devices of SiC is the choice of dielectric materials for surface passivation and insulating coatings. Although SiO2 grown thermally on SiC is a possibility for the gate dielectric, this system has a number of problems related to the higher band gap of SiC, which energetically favors more interface states than for SiO2 on Si, and the low dielectric constant of SiO2 leading to 2.5× higher electric fields across the oxide than in the surface of SiC, and to a premature breakdown at the higher fields and higher temperatures that SiC devices are designed to operate under. As a replacement for SiO2, amorphous Al2O3 thin film coatings have some strong advocates, both for n- and p-type SiC, due to the value of its band gap and the position of its band edges with respect to the band edges of the underlying semiconductor, a number of other material properties, and not the least due to the advances of the atomic-layer-deposition process. Exploring the fact that the chemical bonding of Al2O3 is the strongest among the oxides and therefore stronger than in SiO2, the authors have previously shown how to form an Al2O3 film on Si (111) and Si (100), by simply depositing a few atomic layers of Al on top of an ultrathin (0.8 nm) SiO2 film previously grown on Si surfaces [Si (111) and Si (100)] and heating this system up to around 600 °C (all in ultrahigh vacuum). This converts all the SiO2 into a uniform layer of Al2O3 with an atomically sharp interface between the Al2O3 and the Si surface. In the present work, the same procedures are applied to form Al2O3 on a SiC film grown on top of Si (111). The results indicate that a similar process, resulting in a uniform layer of 1–2 nm of Al2O3 with an atomically sharp Al2O3/SiC interface, also works in this case.
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January 2017
Research Article|
December 27 2016
Growth of aluminum oxide on silicon carbide with an atomically sharp interface
Ana Gomes Silva;
Ana Gomes Silva
Departamento de Física, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia,
Universidade Nova de Lisboa
, P-2829-516 Caparica, Portugal
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Kjeld Pedersen;
Kjeld Pedersen
Department of Physics and Nanotechnology,
Aalborg University
, Skjernvej 4A, DK-9220 Aalborg East, Denmark
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Zheshen Li;
Zheshen Li
ISA, Department of Physics and Astronomy,
Aarhus University
, Ny Munkegade 120, Building 1520, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
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Jeanette Hvam;
Jeanette Hvam
Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy,
University of Southern Denmark
, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark
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Rajnish Dhiman;
Rajnish Dhiman
Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy,
University of Southern Denmark
, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark
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Per Morgen
Per Morgen
a)
Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy,
University of Southern Denmark
, Campusvej 55, DK-5230 Odense M, Denmark
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a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; electronic mail: permorgen@sdu.dk
J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 35, 01B142 (2017)
Article history
Received:
September 05 2016
Accepted:
December 08 2016
Citation
Ana Gomes Silva, Kjeld Pedersen, Zheshen Li, Jeanette Hvam, Rajnish Dhiman, Per Morgen; Growth of aluminum oxide on silicon carbide with an atomically sharp interface. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 1 January 2017; 35 (1): 01B142. https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4972774
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