Study of SIC oxidation for device application

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a wide bandgap semiconductor that exhibits many excellent electrical properties such as high critical field strength and thermal conductivity. As a result, it has attracted a lot of attention for high temperature, high power and high frequency device applications. In addition, SiC can be thermally oxidized to form silicon dioxide (Si02), which is a critical building block of silicon complimentary metal-oxidesemiconductor (MOS) technology. This means that Si CMOS processes can be possibly transferred directly to SiC based CMOS devices. This renders SiC very attractive and offers many great advantages compared to other wide bandgap semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN). The development of SiC device applications is further propelled by the fact that high quality 4-inch 4H-SiC substrates are commercially available.