AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition
    Materials Characterization in the Semiconductor Industry Focus Topic Tuesday Sessions
       Session MC-TuP

Paper MC-TuP1
Effect of Aromatic Compounds on Semiconducting Boron Carbide Heterojunctions

Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 6:30 pm, Room Hall 3

Session: Materials Characterization in the Semiconductor Industry Poster Session (All areas)
Presenter: Elena Echeverria, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Authors: E.M. Echeverria, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
R. James, University of North Texas
F. Pasquale, University of North Texas
B. Dong, University of North Texas
A. Enders, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
A. Kelber, University of North Texas
P.A. Dowben, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Correspondent: Click to Email
A new class of semiconducting boron carbide devices was fabricated based on a carborane icosahedra (B10C2H12) precursor via plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition in the presence of aromatic linking units. Our studies have showed that these novel superconducting boron carbide films have excellent rectifying characteristics when deposited on n-type Si, making this heterojunctions extremely promising for neutron detection and other device applications. Films were fabricated by co-deposition of aromatic compounds (pyridine, benzene, diaminobenzene, etc.) with ortho-carborane using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). In the case of samples containing pyridine, the characteristic I–V curves for the heterojunction diodes exhibit strong rectification and largely unperturbed normalized reverse bias leakage currents with increasing pyridine content. Similar results are showed when benzene or diaminobenzene are used as linking groups, with a threshold voltage lower for diaminobenzene compared to benzene. These results suggest that modifications to boron carbide may result in better heterojunction diodes, and point the way to a whole family of future studies that may ultimately lead to boron carbides better suited to low power and low flux neutron detection.