Silicon carbide is an adaptable semiconductor material, capable of being doped with nitrogen, boron and aluminum to form various semiconductor devices used across a range of applications.
Silicon carbide substrate can be mass produced using PVT technology, making its mass production more cost effective than sapphire substrate. Leading manufacturers such as Wolfspeed and Infineon have already established 8-inch production lines.
Hårdhet
Silicon Carbide (SiC) substrates and wafers are specialized semiconductor materials used in power electronics production, particularly applications that require high voltage and temperature levels. SiC boasts superior hardness compared to more commonly used materials like silicon; as it can withstand higher electrical fields than its counterpart, SiC makes for ideal use in harsh conditions as well as increased energy efficiency.
Silicon carbide substrate manufacturing can be an intricate process with many variables that must be tightly managed. Starting with raw material made from silica, which must then be ground into fine powder before being mixed with water to form single crystal silicon carbide and sublimated under extreme temperatures to produce single crystal silicon carbide crystals. Once produced, these must then be carefully polished in order to meet epitaxial growth criteria and free of cracks, scratches or any stepped areas which might diminish quality of epitaxial layers.
Silicon carbide substrates require very precise processing in order to produce high-quality results, with surface quality playing an instrumental role in subsequent epitaxial growth, device performance and manufacturing costs. Brittle substrates may crack under stress during manufacturing which leads to damage that raises production costs further still. A silicon carbide wafer’s hardness can be measured using the Brinell hardness test which applies a load and measures its resulting round impression diameter.
High Temperature
Silicon carbide (SiC) is an innovative compound semiconductor composed of silicon and carbon. As such, SiC wafers boast superior properties when compared with traditional silicon semiconductors, leading them to become pioneers of advanced technology particularly power electronics. Offering greater breakdown electric field strength and three times wider band gaps than their silicon counterparts, SiC could soon revolutionize a number of industries worldwide.
SiC substrates boast the ability to withstand high temperatures, making them suitable for high speed, high voltage applications. Furthermore, these substrates feature a low coefficient for thermal expansion allowing manufacturers to fit more transistors onto one chip without altering shape or size as temperature fluctuates.
Manufacturers typically produce cubic SiC using either chemical vapor deposition or the Acheson process. Chemical vapor deposition involves placing a special mixture of gasses into a sealed high-temperature cavity to initiate crystal growth; Acheson uses similar setup but instead utilizes electron beam technology – more efficient yet complex, however! Both require substantial amounts of energy, equipment, and knowledge to be successful.
After producing a large crystal, it is cut into individual wafers for use in manufacturing semiconductor chips with either an n-type or p-type structure using either silicon or gallium nitride substrates.
Low Coefficient for Thermal Expansion
Silicon carbide substrates feature low coefficients of thermal expansion, meaning their expansion or contraction does not significantly alter underlying devices or chips. This makes them suitable for applications where high voltage devices would cause damage, such as those operating at very high voltage levels, which might otherwise generate enough heat to cause irreparable failure of them.
Silicon carbide’s low thermal expansion also makes it an attractive substrate for astronomical telescopes that require stable optical surfaces for maximum performance. Furthermore, its rigidity, hardness and thermal conductivity make it a suitable replacement for traditional glass materials like magnesium fluoride. Furthermore, producing polycrystalline SiC disks with diameters up to 3.5 metres (11.5 feet) has proven revolutionary for major observatories like Herschel and Gaia which already use SiC mirrors as part of their telescope systems.
SiC is a rare element, produced artificially through sublimating powder under high temperature and vacuum conditions and then allowing its components to grow on top of a seed crystal surface. Unfortunately, this complex process is very hard to control with high error rates that compromise wafer quality; only a select few companies worldwide possessing this capability (China’s SICC being at the forefront with their 12-inch substrate and other manufacturers such as Semisic, Synlight Crystal and TankeBlue working towards similar goals).
High Voltage Capability
Silicon Carbide is an excellent choice for applications requiring high voltage capacity, due to its superior strength. This material can withstand higher electric fields without cracking, while switching at nearly ten times the rate of silicon, making devices smaller and more energy efficient.
SiC, short for silicon carbide, is a compound semiconductor consisting of silicon and carbon held together by strong tetrahedral bonds. It can be doped with nitrogen or phosphorus to form an n-type semiconductor, while beryllium, boron, aluminum or gallium may be added for doping to produce p-type semiconductors. While silicon carbide occurs naturally as small amounts in moissanite minerals, all commercially available silicon carbide is manufactured synthetically using the sintering process just like that used in making tungsten carbide that’s used in making grinding wheels or ceramic plates found inside bulletproof vests.
Current manufacturers create cubic SiC wafers through either PVT (pressure-vapor transport) or chemical vapor deposition methods, the latter of which involves mixing gases in a vacuum environment before depositing them on substrates where they undergo vaporization and crystallization – this requires careful temperature regulation in order to avoid cracking of brittle material; Wolfspeed owns all aspects of single crystal growth including slicing and wafering for quality assurance of their products.
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