Structure and electronic properties of SiC thin-films deposited by RF magnetron sputtering

SiC thin-films were prepared by RF-magnetron sputtering technique(RMS) with the target of single crystalline SiC and then annealed. The surface morphology of thin-films was characterized by AFM. The result shows that the surface of the thin-films is smooth and compact; XRD analysis reveals that the thin-films are amorphous. The thickness, square-resistance and curves of resistance — temperature were measured. The results show that the curves of InR versus 1/kT both before and after annealing satisfy the expression of InR∞ΔW/kT, where ΔW is electron excitation energy in the range of 0.014 2–0.018 5 eV, and it has a trend of increasing when the temperature is increased. After synthetical analysis we get the conclusion that the electronic mechanism of the thin-films is short distance transition between the localized states in the temperature range of 25–250 °C. The resistivity is in the range of 2.4 × 10−3–4.4 × 10−3 °Cm and it has the same trend as electron excitation energy when annealing temperature is increased, which further confirms the electronic mechanism of thin-films and the trend of electron excitation energy versus annealing temperature.