Movement and pinning of dislocations in SiC

Abstract

SiC bipolar devices show a degradation under forward-biased operation due to the formation and rapid propagation of stacking faults in the active region of the device. It is believed that the observed rapid stacking fault growth is due to a recombination-enhanced dislocation glide (REDG) mechanism at the bordering partial dislocations having either Si or C core atoms. We investigated the effect of charge on the dislocation kinks and found that only silicon kinks have a deep filled band above the valence band. Trapping of holes into this band permits dislocation glide at room temperature. This mechanism is distinct from REDG as it requires only holes to be trapped at a Si partial and not in addition electrons in stacking fault states. We furthermore looked at the pinning of dislocations by nitrogen and boron and found a strong pinning of the C core by N and of the Si core by B. © 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.