High-k dielectrics based field plate edge termination engineering in 4H-SiC Schottky diode

This paper develops a deep insight into the behaviour of high-k dielectric-based field plate on Ni/4H-SiC Schottky diode. It tries to explain the mechanism by which high-k materials outperform silicon dioxide, when used under the field plate. Phenomena like modulation of field enhancement factor, reshaping of equipotential contours and expansion of depletion region while maintaining fixed depletion ratio (length/width = 2.3) helps to understand the electrical behaviour of high-k dielectric-based field plate. High-k materials relaxed the equipotential contours under the field plate edge which resulted in electric field reduction up to 88% and significant drop from 6.6 to 2.2 in field enhancement factor at device edges. The study considers the field plate of different dielectrics (SiO₂, Si₃N₄, Al₂0₃, HfO₂) and in each case, analytically explores the optimisation of field plate parameters (overlap length and dielectric thickness, dielectric constant). All the investigations have been done using numerical simulations on calibrated setup.