High Temperature Characterization Of Ni, W And Al Contacts To 3C-Silicon Carbide Thin Films

With the current availability of large-area 3C-SiC films, it is imperative that stable high temperature contacts be developed for high power devices. By comparing the existing data in the literature, we demonstrate that the contact behavior on each of the different polytypes of SiC will vary significantly. In particular, we demonstrate this for 6H-SiC and 3C-SiC. The interface slope parameter, S, which is a measure of the Fermi-level pinning in each system varies between 0.4–0.5 on 6H-SiC, while it is 0.6 on 3C-SiC. This implies that the barrier heights of contacts to 3C-SiC will vary more significantly with the choice of metal than for 6H-SiC.Aluminum, nickel and tungsten were deposited on 3C-SiC films and their specific contact resistance measured using the circular TLM method. High temperature measurements (up to 400°C) were performed to determine the behavior of these contacts at operational temperatures. Aluminum was used primarily as a baseline for comparison since it melts at 660°C and cannot be used for very high temperature contacts. The specific contact resistance (ρc) for nickel at room temperature was 5 × 10−4 Ω-cm2, but increased with temperature to a value of 1.5 × 10−3 Ω-cm2 at 400°C. Tungsten had a higher room temperature × 10−3 Ω-cm2, which remained relatively constant with increasing temperature up to 400°C. This is related to the fact that there is hardly any reaction between tungsten and silicon carbide even up to 900°C, whereas nickel almost completely reacts with SiC by that temperature. Contact resistance measurements were also performed on samples that were annealed at 500°C.