| With superior properties such as a large band gap, high thermal conductivity, and large electron drift velocity, SiC is expected to give a new dimension to high power, high temperature electronic devices used in power applications, microwave circuits, and for the space and automobile industries. SiC possesses an inherent advantage over its other large bandgap competitors in terms of inherited processing and device technology from Si. However, there is inadequate understanding of SiC device and its parameters. Simple extrapolations from Si are known to be inadequate. The aim of this dissertation, therefore. is to produce better understanding of SiC devices using drift-diffusion numerical simulations and the extraction of SiC material parameters using Monte Carlo codes.; Results of this study show that despite favorable material characteristics. there are inherent problems associated with SiC. Many parameters obtained using Monte Carlo simulations are new additions to the SiC literature. These have also been used in simulation of device behavior. These SiC parameters were explained and compared with available experimental data. Results show that electron mobility in MOSFET structures suffers due to surface roughness. Deep levels have been shown to play a significant role in p-n diode transient response, and can cause persistent conductivity. Device geometry has been shown to play a major role in device stability. Finally, the influence of deep levels on charge injection at the contacts has been demonstrated, and could be used to improve device stability in MSM diodes. |
