Characterization of epitaxial 4H-SiC for photon detectors

High purity epitaxial 4H-SiC became a serious candidate for the fabrication of spectrometric radiation detectors with a high resistance to neutrons and gamma rays damage and suitable for applications in hot plasma diagnostics. The present work reports on i) the characterization of high purity epitaxial 4H-SiC grown by liquid phase epitaxy on SiC substrates and ii) the performances of metal/4H-SiC detectors fabricated on the same material. X-ray diffraction and topography as well as I-V, C-V and DLTS measurements are used for the evaluation of the material properties and device characteristics. The UV and X-ray detection abilities are evaluated by photocurrent measurements in the 3-6 eV region and pulse-height spectra measurements of the 241Am, respectively. Preliminary results of the detector hardness to fast neutron and gamma ray radiations are also reported