Evaluation of Temperature at SiC Surface During Pulsed Excimer Laser Irradiation

Abstract

While high-energy and high-power lasers such as the excimer laser have high potential to provide benefits over conventional thermal processing for power devices made of wide bandgap semiconductors such as 4H-SiC, one of challenges remained is measurement of temperature of materials during processing. In this work, use of the two-color method is investigated to measure time evolution of temperature at the 4H-SiC surface during KrF excimer laser irradiation. It is shown that the surface temperature reaches about 3000 K within a few tens of nanoseconds, which reasonably agrees with thermal simulation. Diffusion of aluminum atoms induced by the laser irradiation is also investigated. Results suggest that diffusion coefficient can be extremely larger than extrapolated from values obtained by the conventional furnace annealing.