Study of a novel lateral RESURF 3C-SiC on Si Schottky diode

3C-SiC can be grown on large area silicon substrates, thus potentially it can lower the cost of wide band gap power devices. However, the uncertain carrier transportation at the 3C-SiC/Si interface does not favour vertical device structures. A lateral design can avoid this problem without removing the substrate after epitaxial growth. In this work, a novel lateral charge compensation Schottky diode is modelled and studied using the finite element device simulator Silvaco. Compared with conventional lateral diodes, the simulation results for the proposed design demonstrate excellent performance with low specific on-resistance (≈4 mOhm.cm²) and high breakdown voltage (> 1200 V). The influences of 3C-SiC epilayer bulk traps, 3C-SiC/Si interface defects as well as the semiconductor surface charge on device performance are studied for practical fabrication considerations.