Electrical Characterization and Reliability of Nitrided-Gate Insulators for N- and P-Type 4H-SiC MIS Devices

In this paper, nitrided insulators such as N2O-grown oxides, deposited SiO2 annealed in N2O, and deposited SiNx/SiO2 annealed in N2O on thin-thermal oxides have been investigated for realization of high performance n- and p-type 4H-SiC MIS devices. The MIS capacitors were utilized to evaluate MIS interface characteristics and the insulator reliability. The channel mobility was determined by using the characteristics of planar MISFETs. Although the N2O-grown oxides are superior to the dry O-2-grown oxides, the deposited SiO2 and the deposited SiNx/SiO2 exhibited lower interface state density (n-MIS: below 7x10(11) cm(-2) eV(-1) at E-C-0.2 eV, p-M IS: below 6x10(11) cm(-2) eV(-1) at E-V+0.2 eV) and higher channel mobility (n-MIS: over 25 cm(2)/Vs, p-MIS: over 10 cm(2)/Vs). In terms of reliability, the deposited SiO2 annealed in N2O exhibits a high charge-to-breakdown over 50 C/cm(2) at room temperature and 15 C/cm(2) at 200 degrees C. The nitrided-gate insulators formed by deposition method have superior characteristics than the thermal oxides grown in N2O.