SIMS Analysis of Nitrogen in Silicon Carbide Using Raster Change Technique

Abstract

Today's state of the art silicon carbide (SiC) growth can produce semi-insulating crystals with a background doping around 5×10¹⁵ atoms/cm3 or lower. It is essential to have an accurate measurement technique with low enough detection limit to measure low level nitrogen concentration. Current SIMS detection limit of low E15 atoms/cm3 will provide accurate determination for nitrogen doping level of 5E16 at/cm3 or higher. In order to determine the lower nitrogen concentration, it is necessary to provide a better detection limit and to separate the contribution of background nitrogen properly. The “raster changing” method provides an accurate way to determine and remove contribution of background nitrogen to the signal, because secondary ion intensities and matrix ion intensities can be analyzed at the same location of the sample by changing the primary beam raster size during a profile. In this study we have succeeded in applying the raster changing method to (a) N in the SiC substrate located under an SiC epi layer, and (b) the detection of N as low as 3E14/ cm3 a bulk-doped SiC substrate.