Insulator investigation on SiC for improved reliability

Significant improved high-temperature reliability of SiC metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) devices has been achieved with both thermally grown oxides and by using a stacked dielectric consisting of silicon oxide-nitride-oxide (ONO). Capacitors of p-type 6H-SiC, n-type 6H-SiC and n-type 4H-SiC were fabricated with a variety of insulators. The best performance was accomplished only with insulators incorporating silicon dioxide. A new thermal oxidation process of growing a dry oxide then following with a wet re-oxidation anneal produces an oxide with the dielectric strength of a dry oxide and the high-quality interface of a wet oxide. MIS field effect transistors (MISFETs) with an ONO gate insulator had surface channel mobilities similar to MISFETs with thermal gate oxides, and demonstrated a lifetime of 10 days at 335/spl deg/C and 15 V bias. The lifetime of the ONO MISFET was a factor of 100 higher than for devices fabricated with deposited oxides, which had been the prior state of the art for high-temperature MISFETs on SiC.