A comparative study of the electrical properties of heavily Al implanted, single crystalline and nanocrystalline SiC

The electrical properties of heavily Al doped single and nanocrystalline 4H-SiC layers on semi-insulating 4H-SiC substrate, prepared by multi-energy, high-fluence Al implantation and subsequent furnace annealing, are investigated by sheet resistance and Hall effect measurements. Ion beam induced crystallization is used to prepare the nanocrystalline SiC layers. The doping levels are chosen around the solid solubility limit of 2x1020 cm-3 in the range from 5x1019 to 1.5x1021 cm-3. The comparison of the results shows that heavily Al doped single crystalline SiC layers have superior conduction properties. The lowest resistivities measured at room temperature are 0.07 Ohm-cm and 0.8 Ohm-cm for the single crystalline and nanocrystalline samples, respectively. Recent results on enhanced Al acceptor activation in nanocrystalline SiC cannot be confirmed. There is an upper limit for the hole concentration in the nanocrystalline samples independent of the Al supersaturation level in the as-implanted state due to outdiffusion of Al in excess to the solid solubility limit during annealing. In contrast to the nanocrystalline SiC layers the as-implanted Al profile in single crystalline material remains stable after annealing even for concentrations above the solid solubility limit. Therefore, in single crystalline material efficient impurity band conduction due to strongly interacting acceptors can be achieved in the range of supersaturation. For lower doping levels impurity band conduction is more effective in nanocrystalline SiC.