Abstract
Silicon carbide is a leading semiconductor material for high temperature, high frequency, and high power applications, with excellent properties such as high electron mobility, large breakdown voltage, good thermal conductivity and high chemical stability. Precise surface preparation techniques to make atomically flat and defect-free SiC surfaces are strongly demanded in the next-generation semiconductor technology. However, effective technique dose not exist particularly for surface smoothing. EEM (Elastic Emission Machining), which is a precise surface preparation technique utilizing chemical reactions between solid surfaces, was applied to solve the problems. In this work, EEM is employed to flattening 4H-SiC (0001) surfaces to clarify the flattening performance and the crystallographic nature of the processed surface. Prepared surfaces are observed and characterized by PSI (Phase Shifting Interferometer), AFM (Atomic Force Microscopy) and LEED (Low Energy Electron Diffraction). Obtained images show that the processed surface has atomic-level flatness, and subsurface damages and surface scratches of the pre-processed surface are completely removed.
