Determination of SiO/4H-SiC conduction band offset by SR-XPS

Kirino, Takashi*; Kagei, Yusuke*; Okamoto, Gaku*; Harries, J.; Yoshigoe, Akitaka ; Teraoka, Yuden; Mitani, Shuhei*; Nakano, Yuki*; Nakamura, Takashi*; Hosoi, Takuji*; Shimura, Takayoshi*; Watanabe, Heiji*

It has been reported that hydrogen incorporation into thermally grown SiO/4H-SiC structures not only improves the interface quality, but also degrades the gate oxide reliability depending on SiC surface orientation. In this study, energy band diagrams of thermally grown SiO/4H-SiC(0001) and SiO/4H-SiC(000-1) structures with and without high-temperature hydrogen annealing were evaluated by synchrotron radiation X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The SiO band gap and valence band offset at SiO/SiC interface were extracted from O 1s energy loss spectra and valence band spectra, respectively. The obtained energy band diagrams revealed that conduction band offsets at SiO/SiC interfaces were decreased after the hydrogen annealing especially for 4H-SiC(000-1) substrates. This is one possible reason for the reliability degradation of 4H-SiC metal-oxide-semiconductor devices by hydrogen incorporation.