Implant Anneal Process for Activating Ion Implanted Regions in SiC Epitaxial Layers

The mechanical strength of silicon carbide dose nor permit the use of diffusion as a means to achieve selective doping as required by most electronic devices. While epitaxial layers may be doped during growth, ion implantation is needed to define such regions as drain and source wells, junction isolation regions, and so on. Ion activation without an annealing cap results in serious crystal damage as these activation processes must be carried out at temperatures on the order of 1600$^{\circ}C$. Ion implanted silicon carbide that is annealed in either a vacuum or argon environment usually results in a surface morphology that is highly irregular due to the out diffusion of Si atoms. We have developed and report a successful process of using silicon overpressure, provided by silane in a CAD reactor during the anneal, to prevent the destruction of the silicon carbide surface, This process has proved to be robust and has resulted in ion activation at a annealing temperature of 1600$^{\circ}C$ without degradation of the crystal surface as determined by AFM and RBS. In addition XPS was used to look at the surface and near surface chemical states for annealing temperatures of up to 1700$^{\circ}C$. The surface and near surface regions to approximately 6 nm in depth was observed to contain no free silicon or other impurities thus indicating that the process developed results in an atomically clean SiC surface and near surface region within the detection limits of the instrument(${\pm}$1 at %).