Influence of the proton irradiation temperature on the characteristics of high-power high-voltage silicon carbide Schottky diodes

For the first time, the effect of irradiation at high temperature (“hot irradiation”) by protons on the capacitance – voltage and current – voltage characteristics of silicon carbide based semiconductor devices was studied. We investigated commercial high-voltage (blocking voltage of 1700 V) integrated 4$H$-SiC Schottky diodes. Irradiation was carried out by protons with an energy of 15 MeV at temperatures of 20–400$^{\circ}$C. It has been established that the most sensitive to radiation parameter determining the radiation resistance of devices is the ohmic resistance of the base, which increases monotonically with increasing radiation dose $D$. It is shown that during “hot” irradiation, the radiation resistance of diodes significantly exceeds the resistance of diodes in low-temperature (“cold”) irradiation . It was concluded that, with increasing irradiation temperature, the rate of formation of deep centers in the upper half of the band gap of silicon carbide decreases.