  This work reports on the morphological and electrical properties of Ni-based
back-side Ohmic contacts formed by laser annealing process for SiC power
diodes. Nickel films, 100 nm thick, have been sputtered on the back-side of
heavily doped 110 um 4H-SiC thinned substrates after mechanical grinding. Then,
to achieve Ohmic behavior, the metal films have been irradiated with an UV
excimer laser with a wavelength of 310 nm, an energy density of 4.7 J/cm2 and
pulse duration of 160 ns. The morphological and structural properties of the
samples were analyzed by means of different techniques. Nanoscale electrical
analyses by conductive Atomic Force Microscopy (C-AFM) allowed correlating the
morphology of the annealed metal films with their local electrical properties.
Ohmic behavior of the contacts fabricated by laser annealing have been
investigated and compared with the standard Rapid Thermal Annealing (RTA)
process. Finally, it was integrated in the fabrication of 650V SiC Schottky
diodes.
