TRANSPARENT CONTACTS TO BETA-SIC FOR OPTICAL ELECTRONIC DEVICE APPLICATIONS

Transparent indium tin oxide (ITO)/beta-silicon carbide (beta-SiC) Sch ottky barrier and ohmic contact have been successfully Fabricated by s puttering ITO films on rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition (RTCVD) prepared beta-SiC grown heteroepitaxially on a (111) silicon substrat e. The transmission line method (TLM) was used to determine the specif ic contact resistance of the ITO/n-SiC ohmic contact for varying opera tion temperatures. It was found that the specific contact resistance i s 0.56 Ohm cm(2) for a temperature of 300 K and decreases with increas ing temperature. The indium (In)/n-SiC, Ni-Cr/n-SiC ohmic contact syst ems were also developed for comparison purposes. In addition, the infl uence of operating temperature on the C-V characteristics of the ITO/p -SiC Schottky barrier was studied. It reveals that the ideality factor n is in the range of 2.3-1.44 for temperature ranging from 300 to 473 K. The barrier height Phi(B)(C-V) is 1.61-1.23 eV with varying operat ion temperature from 300 to 473 K for C-V measurement.