During the last International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS 2021), held as virtual event on 21-24 March 2021, CNR-IMM researchers, in collaboration with STMicroelectronics, reported an interesting investigation on the impact of defects and gate oxide quality on the performance of the 4H-SiC MOSFETs. In particular, besides the conventional characterization methods, the application of scanning capacitance microscopy (SCM) enabled to ascribe the premature device failure to the presence of threading dislocations, whose electronic structure causes a reduced device lifetime in high temperature revers bias (HTRB).

The results have been highlighted in the conference report recently appeared on Compound Semiconductor  (Issue IV, 2021, pagg. 32-38.).  

More details can be found in the full paper:

P. Fiorenza, M.S. Alessandrino, B. Carbone, C. Di Martino, A. Russo, M. Saggio, C. Venuto, E. Zanetti, F. Giannazzo and F. Roccaforte, Understanding the role of threading dislocations on 4H-SiC MOSFET breakdown under high temperature reverse bias stress, Nanotechnology 31, (2020), 125203. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6528/ab5ff6

Part of this research work was carried out in the framework of the European ECSEL JU project REACTION (first and euRopEAn siC eigTh Inches pilOt liNe).