Study of leakage current degradation based on stacking faults expansion in irradiated SiC junction barrier Schottky diodes

Abstract A comprehensive investigation was conducted to explore the degradation mechanism of leakage current in SiC junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diodes under heavy ion irradiation. We propose and verify that the generation of stacking faults (SFs) induced by the recombination of massive electron--hole pairs during irradiation is the cause of reverse leakage current degradation based on experiments results. The irradiation experiment was carried out based on Ta ions with high linear energy transfer (LET) of 90.5 MeV/(mg/cm 2 ). It is observed that the leakage current of the diode undergoes the permanent increase during irradiation when biased at 20% of the rated reverse voltage. Micro-PL spectroscopy and PL micro-imaging were utilized to detect the presence of SFs in the irradiated SiC JBS diodes. We combined the degraded performance of irradiated samples with SFs introduced by heavy ion irradiation. Finally, three-dimensional (3D) TCAD simulation was employed to evaluate the excessive electron–hole pairs (EHPs) concentration excited by heavy ion irradiation. It was observed that the excessive hole concentration under irradiation exceeded significantly the threshold hole concentration necessary for the expansion of SFs in the substrate. The proposed mechanism suggests that the process and material characteristics of the silicon carbide should be considered in order to reinforcing against the single event effect of SiC power devices.