Assessing the effect of hydrogen on the electronic properties of 4H-SiC
Yuanchao Huang(黄渊超)1,2, Rong Wang(王蓉)1,2,†, Yiqiang Zhang(张懿强)3, Deren Yang(杨德仁)1,2, and Xiaodong Pi(皮孝东)1,2,‡
1 State Key Laboratory of Silicon Materials and School of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China; 2 Institute of Advanced Semiconductors & Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Power Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Hangzhou Innovation Center, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 311200, China; 3 School of Materials Science and Engineering & College of Chemistry, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China
Abstract As a common impurity in 4H silicon carbide (4H-SiC), hydrogen (H) may play a role in tuning the electronic properties of 4H-SiC. In this work, we systemically explore the effect of H on the electronic properties of both n-type and p-type 4H-SiC. The passivation of H on intrinsic defects such as carbon vacancies (VC) and silicon vacancies (VSi) in 4H-SiC is also evaluated. We find that interstitial H at the bonding center of the Si-C bond (Hibc) and interstitial H at the tetrahedral center of Si (HiSi-te) dominate the defect configurations of H in p-type and n-type 4H-SiC, respectively. In n-type 4H-SiC, the compensation of HiSi-te is found to pin the Fermi energy and hinder the increase of the electron concentration for highly N-doped 4H-SiC. The compensation of Hibc is negligible compared to that of VC on the p-type doping of Al-doped 4H-SiC. We further examine whether H can passivate VC and improve the carrier lifetime in 4H-SiC. It turns out that nonequilibrium passivation of VC by H is effective to eliminate the defect states of VC, which enhances the carrier lifetime of moderately doped 4H-SiC. Regarding the quantum-qubit applications of 4H-SiC, we find that H can readily passivate VSi during the creation of VSi centers. Thermal annealing is needed to decompose the resulting VSi-nH (n=1-4) complexes and promote the uniformity of the photoluminescence of VSi arrays in 4H-SiC. The current work may inspire the impurity engineering of H in 4H-SiC.
(Density functional theory, local density approximation, gradient and other corrections)
Fund: Project supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No.2018YFB2200101),the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.91964107 and U20A20209),the"Pioneer "and" Leading Goose"Research and Development Program of Zhejiang Province,China (Grant No.2022C01021),and partial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China for Innovative Research Groups (Grant No.61721005).The National Supercomputer Center in Tianjin is acknowledged for computational support.
Corresponding Authors:
Rong Wang,E-mail:rong_wang@zju.edu.cn;Xiaodong Pi,E-mail:xdpi@zju.edu.cn
E-mail: rong_wang@zju.edu.cn;xdpi@zju.edu.cn
About author: 2021-12-11
Cite this article:
Yuanchao Huang(黄渊超), Rong Wang(王蓉), Yiqiang Zhang(张懿强), Deren Yang(杨德仁), and Xiaodong Pi(皮孝东) Assessing the effect of hydrogen on the electronic properties of 4H-SiC 2022 Chin. Phys. B 31 056108
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