Suppressing Al memory effect on CVD growth of 4H-SiC epilayers by adding hydrogen chloride gas

The Al memory effect during the growth of Al-doped 4H-SiC by the hot-wall chemical vapor phase epitaxy method was investigated. To suppress unintentional incorporation of Al impurities during succeeding growth, a technique was developed by employing HCl-assisted “site-competition” growth. Three methods of introducing HCl, namely, HCl flushing before growth, HCl addition during growth, and the combination of the two preceding methods, have been performed and the Al suppression effects corresponding to the input C/Si ratio were studied separately. It is found that lowering the C/Si ratio reduces Al incorporation for all methods of introducing HCl and using the combination of HCl flushing and HCl addition is highly effective. Optimizing growth rate, temperature, and pressure can further improve Al suppression efficiency; thus, a highly abrupt change in Al distribution between Al-doped and undoped epilayers with Al concentration differences of more than five orders of magnitude was obtained, e.g., a steep change from 1020 to 1014 cm−3.