Sub-nm-Scale Depth Profiling of Nitrogen in NO- and N₂-Annealed SiO₂/4H-SiC(0001) Structures

摘要： We demonstrated an x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS)-based technique to reveal the detailed nitrogen profile in nitrided SiO2/4H-SiC structures with sub-nanometer-scale-resolution. In this work, nitric oxide (NO)- and pure nitrogen (N2)-annealed SiO2/4H-SiC(0001) structures were characterized. The measured results of NO-annealed samples with various annealing duration indicate that preferential nitridation just at the SiO2/SiC interfaces (~0.3 nm) proceeds in the initial stage of NO annealing and a longer duration leads to the distribution of nitrogen in the bulk SiO2 within few nanometers of the interface. The high-temperature N2 annealing was found to induce not only SiO2/SiC interface nitridation similarly to NO annealing but also SiO2 surface nitridation.