4H-SiC is one of the promising wide bandgap material that attracts considerable attention in power electronics industry. Several applications have benefited from the improved performances of devices made of 4H-SiC in terms of its higher breakdown fields, efficiency and reliability as well as excellent physical properties. However, the widespread commercialization of this material is still being hindered by the various defects introduced during the crystal growth which is found to degrade the device performance and lifetime. Stacking faults, for example, have been considered to be one of the most detrimental structural defects. It has been predicted theoretically that high nitrogen doping concentration level (above 2 x 10¹⁹cm-3) inside 4H-SiC crystal will increase propensity for formation of stacking faults. These can create quantum wells which can lower the free energy of the whole crystal once the barrier for partial dislocation motion is overcome by thermal energy (achieved by annealing above 1000^o C) [1-2]. Moreover, from a perspective of high power electronic applications, other severe issues, such as inhomogeneous resistivity and a large {0001} surface roughness of substrate are characteristic of heavily nitrogen doped SiC crystal [3]. It is known that, the nitrogen incorporation kinetic is anisotropic in different crystallographic directions during PVT growth of SiC. Therefore, better understanding the nitrogen doping distribution inside the material is important. In our experiments, we conducted X-ray topographic contour mapping [4] using synchrotron monochromatic X-ray beam by rocking the heavily doped wafer surface successively with a fixed angular step size around the near-surface diffraction vectors 0008 and -0008 respectively. From these measurements, a strain map can be derived by deconvoluting the lattice parameter variations from the lattice tilt. The nitrogen doping concentration can be calculated from the isotropic lattice strain due to the incorporation of dopants according to the equation from H. Jacobson [5].

[1] Y. Yang, J. Guo, Ouloide Goue, B. Raghothamachar, M. Dudley, G. Chung, E. Sanchez, J. Quast, I. Manning, and D. Hansen, J. Crystal Growth, 452, 32 (2016).

[2] T.A. Kuhr, J. Liu, H. J. Chung et al., Journal of Applied Physics,92, 5863 (2002).

[3] N. Ohtani, M. Katsuno, M. Nakabayashi, T. Fujimoto et al., J. Crystal Growth, 311, 1475 (2009).

[4] S. R. Stock, Haydn Chen and H. K. Birnbaum, Philosophical Magzine A, 53(1), 73(1986).

[5] H. Jacobson, J. Birch, C. Hallin, A. Henry, R. Yakimova, T. Tuomi, E. Janzén, and U. Lindefelt, Applied Physics Letters 82 (21), 3689 (2003).