Ahn et al. Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:235 NANO EXPRESS Open Access Crystallographic plane-orientation dependent atomic force microscopy-based local oxidation of silicon carbide Jung-Joon Ahn1, Yeong-Deuk Jo1, Sang-Cheol Kim2, Ji-Hoon Lee2, Sang-Mo Koo1* Abstract The effect of crystalline plane orientations of Silicon carbide (SiC) (a-, m-, and c-planes) on the local oxidation on 4H-SiC using atomic force microscopy (AFM) was investigated. It has been found that the AFM-based local oxidation (AFM-LO) rate on SiC is closely correlated to the atomic planar density values of different crystalline planes (a-plane, cm-2; c-plane, cm-2; and m-plane, cm-2). Specifically, at room temperature and under about. | Ahn et al. Nanoscale Research Letters 2011 6 235 http content 6 1 235 o Nanoscale Research Letters a SpringerOpen Journal NANO EXPRESS Open Access Crystallographic plane-orientation dependent atomic force microscopy-based local oxidation of silicon carbide Jung-Joon Ahn 1 Yeong-Deuk Jo1 Sang-Cheol Kim2 Ji-Hoon Lee2 Sang-Mo Koo1 Abstract The effect of crystalline plane orientations of Silicon carbide SiC a- m- and c-planes on the local oxidation on 4H-SiC using atomic force microscopy AFM was investigated. It has been found that the AFM-based local oxidation AFM-LO rate on SiC is closely correlated to the atomic planar density values of different crystalline planes a-plane cm-2 c-plane cm-2 and m-plane cm-2 . Specifically at room temperature and under about 40 humidity with a scan speed of gm s the height of oxides on a- and m-planes 4H-SiC is and 13 nm respectively whereas the height of oxides on the c-plane increased up to 30 nm. In addition the results of AFM-LO with thermally grown oxides on the different plane orientations in SiC are compared. Introduction Silicon carbide SiC is a well-known wide band gap semiconductor material which exhibits high values of thermal conductivities critical fields and chemical inertness. However there have been challenges in processing SiC into device applications since the electric characteristics and yield ratio of SiC-based devices are hampered by micro-pipes and stacking faults. Typical SiC wafers have dislocation densities in the range of 103-105 cm-2 and in order to prevent this problem extensive studies on bulk growths thermal oxidations and etching properties have been conducted on various crystalline planes in SiC 1-4 . In recent years atomic force microscopy-based local oxidation lithography AFM-LO techniques have been receiving increasing attention as attractive emerging lithography techniques for fabrication of nano-scale patterns and related device structures 5-7 . .
