Semiconductor doping characterization method using photoneutralization time constant of corona surface charge

1. A method of characterizing a property of a semiconductor in a wide bandgap semiconductor sample, the method comprising:

measuring an initial value, V 0 , of a surface voltage at a region of a surface of the semiconductor sample in the dark;

charging the region to deep depletion in the dark by depositing a prescribed corona charge at the region;

measuring the surface voltage value in the dark at the region after charging;

illuminating the charged region with light of a specific photon flux, ϕ eff , having a photon energy above the semiconductor bandgap sufficient to generate free minority carriers in the semiconductor sample causing photoneutralization of the corona charge;

monitoring of a photoneutralization induced corona charge decay at the region vs. illumination time, t, using a noncontact time resolved measurement of surface voltage, V(t);

analyzing the monitored time resolved surface voltage decay data V(t) to determine values for a parameter characteristic of a photoneutralization induced corona charge decay at the regions; and

using the parameter at a specific photon flux, ϕ eff , to characterize the property of the semiconductor at the region based on the values of the parameter.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the property of the is a doping concentration, N D , and the parameter characteristic of the photoneutralization induced corona charge decay is a photoneutralization time constant, π ph , at a specific photon flux, ϕ eff .

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising characterizing a doping concentration depth profile for the semiconductor sample based on a surface voltage specific corona charge photoneutralization time constant τ ph versus V.

4. The method of claim 3 , wherein characterizing a doping concentration depth profile in an epitaxial wafer with multiple layers of different doping includes determining the transition surface voltage values between the different doping layer concentrations.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the epitaxial wafer is a AlGaN/GaN HEMT structure.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the transition surface voltage corresponds to the HEMT pinch-off voltage, V P .

7. The method of claim 2 , further comprising characterizing doping of the single epitaxial layer based on an average τ ph value over a range of surface voltages.

8. The method of claim 2 , wherein π ph , is determined according to the equation:

τ

ph

-

1

=

-

d

⁢

ln

⁢

❘

"\[LeftBracketingBar]"

V

⁡

(

t

)

-

V

const

❘

"\[RightBracketingBar]"

dt

in which t is an illumination time and V const is a surface voltage probe offset.

9. The method of claim 8 , further comprising determining a calibration function, τ ph vs N D , and an inverse calibration function, N D vs τ ph , denoted feat using a calibrating measurement of Tur on one or more reference samples with known doping concentration values, N D .

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

normalizing a time constant, τ ph , measured at an effective photon flux, ϕ eff , to a calibration photon flux, ϕ cal , as:

τ

ph

*

=

ϕ

eff

ϕ

cal

·

τ

ph

;

and

determining an absolute doping concentration using the normalized time constant τ ph * according to the equation:

N D =τ ph ·f cal .

11. The method of claim 8 , further comprising calibrating τ ph for a doping concentration, wherein the calibration is specific to the semiconductor wafer sample, and it is performed on one site of the measured wafer sample during the multi-site τ ph based characterization of the wafer sample with all τ ph measurements being performed under the same illumination condition.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the calibration comprises the measurement of the corona charge photoneutralization time constant, τ ph , and the independent measurement of the doping concentration, N D , with the corona noncontact C-V (CnCV) method, wherein both measurements are performed in sequence, one after another, at the same wafer site, and in a similar corona charge induced depletion voltage range.

13. The method of claim 12 , further comprising the use of τ ph and N D to determine the wafer specific inverse calibration function value, f cal , satisfying N D =π ph ·f cal .

14. The method of claim 11 , further comprising determining a doping concentration at all different wafer sites, based on determining π ph at each wafers site, and using the wafer specific value of f cal , determined on a single site.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the surface voltage is measured using a non-contact vibrating Kelvin probe.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the region is illuminated simultaneously with monitoring the surface voltage.

17. The method of claim 1 , wherein the region is illuminated separate from monitoring the surface voltage.

18. The method of claim 1 , wherein the semiconductor sample comprises a semiconductor selected from the group consisting of SiC, GaN, and AlGaN.

19. The method of claim 1 , further comprising identifying a defective region of the semiconductor sample based on V Dark and a dark decay rate ΔV Dark /Δt Dark measured after corona charging but before the illuminating.

20. The method of claim 19 , wherein after identifying an inaccurate measurement on a defective wafer region, the remeasurement is performed on a neighboring location free of defects causing dark surface voltage decay interfering with the photoneutralization based determination of semiconductor parameters.

21. The method of claim 1 , further comprising identifying a contribution to the monitored surface voltage from surface photovoltaic effects other than the corona photoneutralization based on a dark decay magnitude, ΔV Dark , measured after the illuminating.

22. The method of claim 1 , wherein the surface voltage is measured using a transparent probe.

23. The method of claim 1 , further comprising stabilizing fresh epitaxial SiC wafer samples before measurement using a UV pretreatment chamber.

24. The method of claim 23 , wherein the stabilizing pretreatment is performed concurrently with the doping measurement on sets of multiple wafer samples.