Improved local oxidation of silicon carbide using atomic force microscopy

The atomic force microscopy-based local oxidation (AFM-LO) of silicon carbide (SiC) is extremely difficult in general, mainly due to their physical hardness and chemical inactivity. Herein, we report the strongly enhanced AFM-LO of 4H-SiC at room temperature without the heating, chemicals or photoillumination. It is demonstrated that the increased tip loading force (similar to>100 nN) on the highly doped SiC can produce a high enough electric field (similar to 8x10(6) V/cm) under the cathode tip for transporting oxyanions, thereby leading to direct oxide growth on 4H-SiC. The doping concentration and electric field profile of the tip-SiC sample structures were further examined by two-dimensional numerical simulations.