Silicon Carbide Substrate Technologies: Advantages, Challenges and Solutions

Silicon carbide has revolutionized power electronics with its wide bandgap, high thermal conductivity, and high voltage and temperature capabilities. Silicon carbide power devices deliver reduced power losses, higher efficiency, and faster switching, enabling compact, lightweight, and efficient solutions for electric vehicles, renewable energy, and high-voltage systems. With outstanding thermal and chemical properties, silicon carbide is a perfect fit for challenging environments. Its contributions to solar inverters, wind turbines, and energy storage systems ensure higher efficiency and reliability in these clean energy technologies. As we adopt cleaner power solutions, silicon carbide’s role in reducing emissions and advancing energy sustainability gains significance.

While silicon carbide exhibits superior material properties, its crystal growth is very different and significantly more challenging than that of other semiconductor materials. In this tutorial, we will analyze the details of silicon carbide crystal growth and discuss associated challenges and potential solutions. We will also review the processing of grown silicon carbide crystals into substrates.

As silicon carbide device technologies expand into commercial markets, large-diameter substrates gain added importance. In addition to diameter, the usable area on such substrates also impacts the cost of the device. The usable area of silicon carbide substrates can be limited by the defects in the material. As a part of this tutorial, we will examine how defects form and impact silicon carbide crystals, and how they propagate into the overlying epitaxial layers where the device is fabricated.