Physics and Technology of Silicon Carbide Devices

Book excerpt: Silicon (Si) is by far the most widely used semiconductor material for power devices. On the other hand, Si-based power devices are approaching their material limits, which has provoked a lot of efforts to find alternatives to Si-based power devices for better performance. With the rapid innovations and developments in the semiconductor industry, Silicon Carbide (SiC) power devices have progressed from immature prototypes in laboratories to a viable alternative to Si-based power devices in high-efficiency and high-power density applications. SiC devices have numerous persuasive advantages--high-breakdown voltage, high-operating electric field, high-operating temperature, high-switching frequency and low losses. Silicon Carbide (SiC) devices belong to the so-called wide band gap semiconductor group, which offers a number of attractive characteristics for high voltage power semiconductors when compared to commonly used silicon (Si). Recently, some SiC power devices, for example, Schottky-barrier diodes (SBDs), metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effecttransistors (MOSFETs), junction FETs (JFETs), and their integrated modules have come onto the market. Physics and Technology of Silicon Carbide Devices abundantly describes recent technologies on manufacturing, processing, characterization, modeling, etc. for SiC devices.