Silicon carbide’s hardness, rigidity and low thermal expansion rate make it an excellent material for mirrors in astronomical telescopes. Abrasives made of silicon carbide are also widely used; ceramic plates used as bulletproof vest plates contain this material as well. Silicon carbide crystals may even be grown and cut into gems known as moissanite gemstones.
TI is hosting an industry forum to examine the latest innovations and applications utilizing wide bandgap substrate materials. From gallium nitride to silicon carbide, join leading semiconductor companies as they present distinguished speakers at this event.
High Temperature
Silicon carbide (SiC) is a wide bandgap semiconductor material with high melting and boiling points. While SiC occurs naturally as the extremely rare mineral moissanite, since 1893 industrial production has seen it mass produced as powder or crystal for use as an abrasive – often found as bulletproof vest ceramic plates and grinding wheels for metalworking tools. Due to its exceptional hardness, high thermal conductivity, low thermal expansion rates, rigidity properties make this an excellent abrasive material.
SiC is most frequently found as its alpha modification with its hexagonal crystal structure resembling that of Wurtzite; however, recently researchers discovered a beta variant with zinc blende crystal structure that may offer more benefits as an heterogeneous catalyst support material.
Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs), in particular, require high operating temperatures; commercial SiC SBDs currently operate to 175 degC; increasing this operation temperature further requires new packaging solutions and chip metallization processes.
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Silicon carbide’s power density capabilities enable designs to achieve higher output powers at lower costs while using smaller footprints and footprints, enabling engineers to build lighter, cooler systems with greater safety. Isolation capability also increases, providing faster switching with reduced overall system complexity while meeting stringent electromagnetic interference (EMI) regulations.
Silicon carbide’s high thermal conductivity, hardness and rigidity make it an attractive material choice for many applications, including telescope mirrors used by astronomical telescopes. Due to its low thermal expansion coefficient – helping reduce component size and costs. It has also found wide usage in chemical devices.
TI is developing solutions that enable silicon carbide’s use in power electronic applications across a range of sectors. Their wide-bandgap transistors and drivers offer higher power, efficiency, lower cost and superior reliability compared to traditional silicon solutions.
SiC MOSFETs feature lower RDS,ON than Si MOSFETs but require higher gate drive voltage levels in order to function effectively. To meet this challenge, Texas Instruments’ UCC28C5x current-mode PWM controllers offer adjustable UVLO start/stop thresholds and VDDON/VDDOFF pins so they can support various optimal gate drive voltage levels for each SiC device. TI also offers numerous SiC MOSFET driver modules which make design simpler by including both MOSFET and optimized driver on one chip solution.
High Stability
Silicon carbide’s superior temperature stability makes it suitable for use in power electronics that operate at high temperatures, such as electric vehicle (EV) inverters that must perform efficiently while withstanding harsh environmental conditions.
SiC also boasts a higher breakdown electric field strength than silicon, making it more suitable for applications that require high voltage resistance such as high-speed switching or electromagnetic interference reduction compared to traditional silicon devices.
Silicon carbide devices have also shown their efficiency by supporting higher switching frequencies than their silicon counterparts, offering more compact power-conversion systems with increased efficiencies and greater compactness. This development has reignited power electronics worldwide; many different industries are taking advantage of the technology to enhance performance and reliability for their systems – especially electric vehicle charging with gallium nitride FETs providing superior on-board charger performance for electric vehicles worldwide.
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Silicon carbide (SiC) is widely recognized for its reliability in semiconductor electronics applications. This material boasts higher temperature tolerance and voltage threshold than silicon, while providing improved switching performance and manufacturing ease. Although only in trace amounts found naturally (such as meteorites or corundum deposits like Kimberlite), most SiC sold today worldwide – including moissanite jewels – is synthetically made.
SiC is an ideal material for power converters as it enables higher density power levels at lower system efficiencies, leading to greater system efficiencies and smaller sizes – perfect for 24 hour operation of industrial motor control units, UPS systems and DC-to-DC converters used in electric vehicles.
To meet this need, TI has designed high-speed output stage gate drivers for insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) and silicon carbide FETs, providing maximum peak current drive capability with minimal propagation delay for isolated power designs such as solar dc-ac inverters or uninterruptible power supplies.
These devices utilize Texas Instrument’s industry-leading gallium nitride (GaN) MOSFET technology with robust silicon carbide substrates and epi layers, supporting both hard- and soft-switching topologies with reduced on resistance in one package and noise immunity capabilities for use in noisy environments. They make an ideal companion to hard-switching IGBTs or ZVS FETs to increase energy conversion efficiency while improving long-term reliability.
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