Viewing stressed defects in Silicon Carbide 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, with commonplace devices only introduced into the market within the last 5 years. In development, is 20 years behind development when compared to Si, with defects which are sources of failure and inefficiency. One major issue in SiC power electronics devices is the long-term reliability. One fundamental, major contributor to variation of device performance over time is the presence of basal plane dislocations in the starting substrate and its expansion and conversion to Shockley type stacking faults. During a test session at the XMaS Beamline (IH-ME-34), a methodology was found to image SiC layers in diffraction mode with high resolution. We propose use this method to image defects that have undergone thermal stress ex-situ to replicate this mechanism so that it can be further understood.