SIC - A SEMICONDUCTOR FOR HIGH-POWER, HIGH-TEMPERATURE AND HIGH-FREQUENCY DEVICES

SiC has in comparison with Si superior basic properties for applications in high-power, high-frequency and high-temperature electronics. The potential applications of SiC were known decades ago, but the poor quality of the material produced at that time has delayed the device development. However, during the last years the crystal growth process of SiC has been improved considerably. We will present some important properties of SiC, describe the two most common growth processes and discuss fundamental materials problems that remain to be solved. A further aspect, which we will discuss, is the polytypism of SiC, which may allow us to obtain generic knowledge of, for instance, defects in semiconductors.