Microwave photoconductivity decay characterization of high-purity 4H-SiC substrates

A microwave photoconductivity decay (MPCD) technique, which probes conductivity change in wafers in response to either an above-band-gap or below-band-gap laser pulse, has been used to characterize recombination lifetime in high-purity 4H-SiC substrates produced with three different anneal processes. The above-band-gap (266 nm) decay times vary from ∼10 ns to tens of microseconds in the 4H-SiC substrates depending on the wafer growth parameters. Wafers produced using the three processes A (as-grown), B (annealed at 2000 °C), and C (annealed at 2600 °C) have decay times of 10–20 ns, 50–500 ns, and tens of microseconds, respectively. The differences in decay times are attributed to low, medium, and high densities of recombination centers in process C, B, and A wafers, respectively. The MPCD results correlate with other characterization results such as deep level transient spectroscopy, which also showed that the 2600 °C anneal process significantly reduces defect densities, resulting in the enhanced recombination lifetimes. Modeling and one-dimensional simulations indicate a trapping center closer to the conduction band results in a longer MPCD decay transient, but such a trapping based model for the enhanced lifetimes is not compatible with the wide range of experimental characterization results described in this work, which indicate an annealing out of recombination centers at 2600 °C.