Correlation between Contact Angle and Surface Roughness of Silicon Carbide Wafers

Two-inch diameter 6H-SiC wafers were sliced from a SiC ingot and the wafers were ground and polished using different diamond slurries (1 mu m and 0.1 mu m in particles size) to investigate their dependence on wetting on surface roughness (Ra) and polarity using precisely dispensed de-ionized (DI) water drops. The Ra of the Si-face (0001) SiC wafer, after grinding and polishing, was 5.6 and 1.6 nm, respectively, as measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM). For C-face (000-1) SiC wafers, the Ra was 7.2 nm after grinding and 3.3 nm after polishing. The average contact angle measurement of the SiC wafers after final polishing showed clear differences between surface polarity; the contact angle for the Si-face (0001) was similar to 7 degrees greater than that for the C-face (000-1). The difference in contact angles between the Si-face (0001) and the C-face (000-1) tends to increase as the reduction of surface roughness approaches the final stage of polishing. The uniformity of Raman peak intensity in the folded transverse optical phonon band at similar to 780 cm(-1) in scanned areas correlated well with the surface roughness measured by AFM. The contact angle measurement can be used as a convenient surface polarity and surface roughness testing technique for SiC wafers. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published on behalf of The Electrochemical Society by IOP Publishing Limited.