Nano- and Micro-Scale Simulations of Ge/3C-SiC and Ge/4H-SiC NN-Heterojunction Diodes

During the last decade, silicon carbide (SiC) and its heterostructures with other semiconductors have gained a significant importance for wide range of electronics applications. These structures are highly suitable for high frequency and high power applications in extremely high temperature environments. SiC exists in more than 200 different polycrystalline forms, called polytypes. Among these 200 types, the most prominent polytypes with exceptional physical and electrical attributes are 3C-SiC, 4H-SiC and 6H-SiC. Heterostructures of these SiC polytypes with other conventional semiconductors (like Si, Ge) can give rise to interesting electronic characteristics. In this article, Germanium (Ge) has been used to make heterostructures with 3C-SiC and 4H-SiC using a novel technique called diffusion welding. Microscale and nanoscale simulations of nn-heterojunction of Ge/3C-SiC and Ge/4H-SiC have been done. Microscale devices have been simulated with a commercially available semiconductor device simulator tool called Silvaco TCAD. Whereas nanoscale devices have been simulated with QuantumWise Atomistix Toolkit (ATK) software package. Current-voltage (IV) curves of all simulated devices have been calculated and compared. In nanoscale device, the effects of defects on IV-characteristics due to non-ideal bonding (lattice misplacement) at heterojunction interface have been analyzed. Our simulation results reveal that the proposed heterostructure devices with diffusion welding of wafers are theoretically possible. These simulations are the preparations of our near future physical experiments targeted to fabricate SiC based heterostructure devices using diffusion bonding technique.