Ahn Jung-Joon, Jo Yeong-Deuk, Kim Sang-Cheol, Lee Ji-Hoon, Koo Sang-Mo
School of Electronics and Information, Kwangwoon University, Seoul 139-701, Korea.
Nanoscale Res Lett. 2011 Mar 18;6(1):235. doi: 10.1186/1556-276X-6-235.
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, 7.45 cm-2; c-plane, 12.17 cm-2; and m-plane, 6.44 cm-2). Specifically, at room temperature and under about 40% humidity with a scan speed of 0.5 μm/s, the height of oxides on a- and m-planes 4H-SiC is 6.5 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.
