Analysis of carrier recombination coefficients of 3C- and 6H-SiC: Insights into recombination mechanisms in stacking faults of 4H-SiC

Abstract

In recent years, 4H-SiC power devices have been widely employed in power electronic systems owing to their superior performance to Si power devices. However, stacking faults in 4H-SiC can degrade the device performance. Stacking faults can be considered as polytype inclusions in 4H-SiC. Carrier recombination in stacking faults is considered a cause for performance degradation. Understanding carrier recombination in different polytypes other than 4H-SiC can be helpful in understanding the mechanism of performance degradation due to stacking faults in 4H-SiC. Therefore, in this study, we characterized the recombination coefficients of 3C- and 6H-SiC and compared them with those of 4H-SiC using the time-resolved free-carrier absorption measurement method. Recombination at the stacking faults in 4H-SiC cannot be considered as the intrinsic recombination of inclusions of other polytypes.