The specific contact resistance of an ohmic contact will be discussed including ways to calculate and measure this parameter. Ohmic contacts to n‐ and p‐type hexagonal SiC will then be detailed. Low resistance n‐type ohmic contacts are predominately fabricated by annealing a refractory metal, thereby forming a silicide with a lowered Schottky barrier height at the metal–SiC interface. P‐type contacts on the other hand generally use Al or Al alloys which upon annealing enable Al to diffuse into the SiC thus resulting in ohmic properties. Aluminium alloys however suffer from many problems which will be discussed. Other novel contacting schemes to p‐type SiC will also be reviewed.
Specific contact resistances measured at elevated temperatures for Ni ohmic contacts to 6H-SiC were reported. The specific contact resistances were measured with the linear transmission line method at both room temperature and at 500 °C and yielded values <5×10−6 Ω cm2 at both temperatures. The trend shows a decreasing contact resistance at higher temperatures. The annealed metal film is a nickel silicide with substantial mixing of C throughout the silicide layer.
Specific contact resistance measurements are reported for Al-Ti ohmic contacts to epitaxial p-type 6H-SiC as a function of epitaxial doping. The circular transmission line method was used to measure the specific contact resistance including the sheet resistance of the epitaxial layer and the modified sheet resistance under the contact. Epitaxial layers with Al doping between 5.5×1015 and 2×1019 cm−3 yielded specific contact resistances between 2.9×10−2 and 1.5×10−5 Ω cm2. A good theoretical fit to the contact resistance data was obtained by assuming the metal-6H-SiC barrier height to equal 0.37 eV.
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