Silicon carbide high-power devices

In recent gears, silicon carbide has received increased attention because of its potential for high-power devices. The unique material properties of SiC, high electric breakdown field, high saturated electron drift velocity, and high thermal conductivity are what give this material its tremendous potential in the power device arena. 4H-SiC Schottky barrier diodes (1400 V) with forward current densities over 700 A/cm(2) at 2 V have been demonstrated. Packaged SIT's have produced 57 W of output power at 500 MHz. SiC UMOSFET's (1200 V) are projected to have 15 times the current density of Si IGBT's (1200 V). Submicron gate length 4H-SiC MESFET's have achieved f(max) = 32 GHz, f(T) = 14.0 GHz, and power density = 2.8 W/mm @ 1.8 GHz. The performance of a wide variety of SiC devices will be compared to that of similar Si and GaAs devices and to theoretically expected results.