Revisiting the Site-Competition Doping of 4H-SiC: Cases of N and Al

Because the well-known site-competition and step-controlled epitaxy rules cannot reasonably describe all the incorporation processes of the main impurities (Al and N) into 4H-SiC during epitaxy, the concept of replacement incorporation was proposed and applied to explain the experimental results published so far. In this model, the transient formation of C or Si vacancies at the surface or sub-surface of terraces is proposed to play a key role by destabilizing the impurities sitting on them. In addition to the availability of these vacancies at the surface, desorption was proposed to be a very important limiting process for Al incorporation while only occasionally relevant for N incorporation. The main 4H-SiC epitaxial growth parameters are reviewed and discussed according to the proposed replacement model.