A Comparative Study of the Crystal Growth Techniques of Silicon Carbide, Technology Adaption and the Road to Low Cost Silicon Carbide Materials

The growing demand for power electronic device for automotive, photovoltaic, transportation, motor drives creates an enormous demand for widebandgap semiconducting materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN). While GaN based devices can be used for low voltages, SiC is the workhorse for voltages >600. Progress in the availability of larger diameter SiC wafers has driven the final cost of device assembly down. In this paper we compare different growth techniques for growing high quality SiC crystals, technology adaption and road to low cost SiC materials. GT Advanced Technologies has been involved in SiC sublimation equipment manufacturing since the year 2000 and the results from our 100 mm and 150 mm SiC crystals show high epi-quality.