Defects in an electron-irradiated 6H-SiC diode studied by alpha particle induced charge transient spectroscopy; Their impact on the degraded charge collection efficiency

Iwamoto, Naoya*; Koizumi, Atsushi*; Onoda, Shinobu; Makino, Takahiro; Oshima, Takeshi; Kojima, Kazutoshi*; Koike, Shumpei*; Uchida, Kazuo*; Nozaki, Shinji*

In this study, we carried out an attempt to identify the defects responsible for the degraded charge collection efficiency of the 6H-SiC pn diode irradiated with 1 MeV electrons by the alpha particle induced charge transient spectroscopy. To form defects in the SiC crystal, one of the diodes was irradiated with 1 MeV electrons at a fluence of 110 /cm. Collected charges of the diodes were measured in room temperature using 5.486 MeV alpha particles from Am source. After the electron irradiation, the collected charge of the diode at a reverse bias of 100 V decreased to 84% of its initial value. In order to investigate the relationship between degradation of collected charge and defects in detail, time-dependent collected charges of the diodes were measured in temperature ranges from 170 K to 310 K. As a result, two distinct peaks labeled X and X are found for the electron-irradiated diode, and their activation energies are estimated to be 0.30 and 0.47 eV, respectively. These two peaks are considered to correspond to the defect levels introduced by the electron irradiation. In particular, when the diodes are used in room temperature, X is more critical to the charge collection than X.