Mid Sweden University

The high field hole transport in 4H-SiC has been studied using a full band Monte Carlo (MC) simulation model that includes band to band tunneling and allows mixing of the band states during carrier drift. Impact ionization coefficients along the c-axis direction have been extracted and compared with experimental data. It is shown that the band to band tunneling mechanism is crucial in order to explain experimental results. The carrier distribution function obtained from the MC simulations has been used to determine the breakdown luminescence spectra coming from interband transitions. Our results are in good agreement with the available experimental luminescence spectra for SiC polytypes, and the importance of including interband tunneling is clearly demonstrated.