News

15 September 2009

 

Dow Corning ships low-defect 4-inch SiC substrates

Materials giant Dow Corning says that it is now shipping its low-defect silicon carbide (SiC) substrates in volume quantities.

Last year at the European Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ECSCRM), the US-headquartered firm reported that it had significantly improved micropipe densities, to about 10 such defects per square centimeter of material.

Jim Helwick, the director of Dow Corning’s Compound Semiconductor Solutions division, said that the progress detailed then had now been applied to commercial products: “The new technology has been incorporated into wafers sizes up to 4 inches in diameter thus far, with work underway to exploit [it] in even larger diameter wafers up to 6 inches… In fact, we are seeing an improvement in defect densities as the diameter is increased,” he added.

Reducing the level of defects in SiC semiconductor material is seen as a significant step in the wide-bandgap semiconductor community’s efforts to stimulate the broad adoption of SiC-based devices.

Those devices have the potential to be used in high-power electronic applications such as communications, solar and wind energy systems, electrical distribution, and hybrid and electric vehicles – provided that production yields are sufficiently high to allow cost-effective manufacturing.

“We now have the wafer and epitaxy technology and high-volume production capabilities to supply our customers’ growing needs for affordable, leading-edge SiC products,” Helwick said.

Dow’s 4H-SiC material – the polytype most widely demanded for SiC electronics - has been available in 3-inch format for some time. On its website, the company quotes a typical bow of 6 microns for those wafers, and a typical warp of 17 microns.

The US firm is just one of a host of SiC wafer suppliers hoping to cash in on the anticipated market for wide-bandgap electronics as the technology becomes more widespread.

Rivals in Europe include France-based NovaSiC and Germany’s SiCrystal, while in the US Dow Corning competes with the likes of Cree and SemiSouth. Over the past couple of years, the first Chinese competitor has also emerged, in the form of TankeBlue.

At the forthcoming International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (ICSCRM) in Nuremberg, Germany next month, SiCrystal will give an invited talk on its own development of high-quality 4-inch SiC substrates.

Meanwhile, Japanese giant Nippon Steel will detail its progress towards large-diameter 4H-SiC crystals. In the past, Japanese car companies Honda and Nissan have been at the forefront of SiC device development for applications in electric vehicles.

See related item:

Merchant substrate market for GaN to reach $470m in 2013

Search: Dow Corning SiC substrates

Visit: www.dowcorning.com/compoundsemiconductor

Visit: www.icscrm2009.org

The author Michael Hatcher is a freelance journalist based in Bristol, UK.