X-Ray Microscopy of Silicon Carbide Superjunctions for Power Electronics

The wide bandgap semiconductor material Silicon Carbide (SiC) is an attractive proposition to replace Silicon (Si) for the development of efficient, robust power electronic devices. However, whilst the material is high quality and single crystal, it is 20-30 years behind development when compared to Si maturity and is still riddled with defects which give rise to sources of failure and inefficiency. Recently, trench refill epitaxy (TFE) has been developed at Warwick, where semiconductor processing techniques have been used to create microstructures in SiC and refilled with single crystal SiC to create exotic structures termed superjunctions (SJs). However, these structures also lend themselves to terminating and annihilation of defects. We would like to work with the Scientists at ID03 to perform a preliminary study of stress and strain in these microstructures and their defects to correlate these with growth mechanisms and device characteristics from the resulting materials.