Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers (한국전기전자재료학회논문지)

The Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers (한국전기전자재료학회)
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Local Oxidation of 4H-SiC using an Atomic Force Microscopy

원자현미경을 이용한 탄화규소 (SiC)의 국소산화

  • 조영득 (광운대학교 전자재료공학과) ;
  • 방욱 (한국전기연구원 재료응용연구단 고집적전원연구그룹) ;
  • 김상철 (한국전기연구원 재료응용연구단 고집적전원연구그룹) ;
  • 김남균 (한국전기연구원 재료응용연구단 고집적전원연구그룹) ;
  • 구상모 (광운대학교 전자재료공학과)
  • Published : 2009.08.01

Abstract

The local oxidation using an atomic force microscopy (AFM) is useful for Si-based fabrication of nanoscale structures and devices. SiC is a wide band-gap material that has advantages such as high-power, high-temperature and high-frequency in applications, and among several SiC polytypes, 4H-SiC is the most attractive polytype due to the high electron mobility. However, the AFM local oxidation of 4H-SiC for fabrication is still difficult, mainly due to the physical hardness and chemical inactivity of SiC. In this paper, we investigated the local oxidation of 4H-SiC surface using an AFM. We fabricated oxide patterns using a contact mode AFM with a Pt/Ir-coated Si tip (N-type, 0.01-0.025 ${\Omega}cm$) at room temperature, and the relative humidity ranged from 40 to 50 %. The height of the fabricated oxide pattern (1-3 nm) on SiC is similar to that of typically obtained on Si ($10^{15}^{\sim}10^{17}$ $cm^{-3}$). We perform the 2-D simulation to further analyze the electric field between the tip and the surface. We demonstrated that a specific electric field (4 ${\times}$ $10^7\;V/m$) and a doping concentration ($^{\sim}10^{17}$ $cm^{-3}$) is sufficient to switch on/off the growth of the local oxide on SiC.

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