Electrical and Spectroscopic Properties of SiC Detectors

In this paper we compare suitability of three different semi-insulating bulk silicon carbide (SiC) materials for fabrication of radiation detectors. We prepared planar sensors with various metal contact combination and characterized detector quality by the alpha spectroscopy and I-V characteristic measurements. We observed that 4H-SiC material from the II-VI company is not suitable for radiation detector fabrication due to high concentration of vanadium doping. We also present a poor charge collection efficiency of the 4H-SiC Norstel material due to high concentration of residual impurities and we evaluated low mobility-lifetime product (alpha)= 3.5E-7 cm2/V from the alpha spectroscopy. We demonstrate that the 4H-SiC material from the Cree company is the best candidate for the production of radiation detectors. We evaluated mobility-lifetime product (alpha)= 5.4E-6 cm2/V using AuTi/SiC/TiAu contact structure.