Chloride-based Silicon Carbide CVD

Sammanfattning: Silicon carbide (SiC) is a promising material for high power and high frequency devices due to its wide bandgap, high break down field and high thermal conductivity. The most established technique for growth ofepitaxial layers of SiC is chemical vapor deposition (CVD) at around 1550 °C using silane, SiH4, and lighthydrocarbons e g propane, C3H8, or ethylene, C2H4, as precursors heavily diluted in hydrogen. For high-voltagedevices made of SiC thick (> 100 ?m), low doped epilayers are needed. Normal growth rate in SiC epitaxy is~ 5 ?m/h, rendering long growth times for such SiC device structures. The main problem when trying to achievehigher growth rate by increasing the precursor flows is the formation of aggregates in the gas phase; for SiCCVD these aggregates are mainly silicon droplets and their formation results in saturation of the growth ratesince if the gas flow does not manage to transport these droplets out of the growth zone, they will eventuallycome in contact with the crystal surface and thereby creating very large defects on the epilayer making theepilayer unusable. To overcome this problem, high temperature- as well as low pressure processes have beendeveloped where the droplets are either dissolved by the high temperature or transported out of the susceptor bythe higher gas flow. A different approach is to use chloride-based epitaxy that uses the idea that the silicondroplets can be dissolved by presence of species that bind stronger to silicon than silicon itself. An appropriatecandidate to use is chlorine since it forms strong bonds to silicon and chlorinated compounds of high purity canbe purchased. In this thesis the chloride-based CVD process is studied by using first a single molecule precursor,methyltrichlorosilane (MTS) that contributes with silicon, carbon and chlorine to the process. Growth of SiCepilayers from MTS is explored in Paper 1 where growth rates up to 104 ?m/h are reported together withmorphology studies, doping dependence of growth rate and the influence of the C/Si- and Cl/Si-ratios on thegrowth rate and doping. In Paper 2 MTS is used for the growth of 200 ?m thick epilayers at a growth rate of 100?m/h, the epilayers are shown to be of very high crystalline quality and the growth process stable. The growthcharacteristics of the chloride-based CVD process, is further studied in Paper 3, where the approach to add HClgas to the standard precursors silane and ethylene is used as well as the MTS approach. A comparison betweenliterature data of growth rates for different approaches is done and it is found that a precursor molecule withdirect Si-Cl bonds should be more efficient for the growth process. Also the process stability and growth ratedependence on C/Si- and Cl/Si are further studied. In Paper 4 the standard growth process for growth on 4° offaxis substrates is improved in order to get better morphology of the epilayers. It is also shown that the optimizedprocess conditions can be transferred to a chloride-based process and a high growth rate of 28 ?m/h wasachieved, using the HCl-approach, while keeping the good morphology. In Paper 5 chloride-based CVD growthon on-axis substrates is explored using both the HCl- and MTS-approaches. The incorporation of dopants in SiCepilayers grown by the chloride-based CVD process is studied in Papers 6 and 7 using the HCl-approach. InPaper 6 the incorporation of the donor atoms nitrogen and phosphorus is studied and in Paper 7 theincorporation of the acceptor atoms boron and aluminum. The incorporation of dopants is found to follow thetrends seen in the standard growth process but it is also found that the Cl/Si-ratio can affect the amount ofincorporated dopants.