LAKE WALES, Fla. — Silicon carbide (SiC) — a wide-bandgap semiconductor — creates power transistors that are today’s premium alternative to silicon power transistors when paired with a diode to provide the lowest-temperature, highest-frequency power devices available. SiC transistors produce 30 percent less heat than silicon power transistors, but thus far SiC’s higher performance comes at roughly five times the price of silicon.
North Carolina State University (NCSU) professor Jay Baliga argues that proprietary SiC processes have kept prices high and erected barriers to entry. Looking to lower those barriers with a process that can be licensed at low cost, Baliga and his research colleagues devised the Process Engineered for Manufacturing SiC Electronic-devices (PRESiCE) and worked with Texas Instruments’ X-Fab to implement it. The researchers will present a paper on the process on Friday (Sept. 22) at the International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials (Washington, D.C.).
The Process Engineered for manufacturing SiC Electronic-devices (PRESiCE) aims to bring down the cost of SiC-based power-device production.
(Source: North Carolina State University)
PRESiCE is not only a lower-cost alternative to developing your own SiC process but is also more efficient than the old-school, proprietary processes, according to Baliga. Low licensing costs will allow more players to join the competition, thus increasing SiC production. That, in turn, which will inevitably drive down prices for SiC, perhaps to only a 50 percent premium over silicon.
Besides running at lower temperatures, SiC power devices can switch at higher frequencies, allowing power electronics to use smaller capacitors, inductors, and other passive devices, and ultimately allowing designers to pack more punch into smaller spaces with less weight. Baliga says PRESiCE achieves high yields and tightly controlled properties for the SiC devices it produces.
Jay Baliga
To prove the concept, the researchers used PRESiCE in TI’s X-Fab to fabricate a 1.2-kV power supply by manufacturing SiC power MOSFETs, ACCUFETs, and junction-barrier-controlled Schottky (JBS) rectifiers. A JBS fly-back rectifier in the power MOSFET structure created the power JBSFET, which allowed a 40 percent saving in chip area and halved the package count over a silicon-based design.
The PowerAmerica Institute at the Department of Energy provided funding for the research. Baliga’s coauthors on the paper to be presented on Friday were K. Han, J. Harmon, A. Tucker, and S. Syed of the North Carolina State University and W. Sung of the State University of New York Polytechnic Institute Colleges of Nanoscale Science.
— R. Colin Johnson, Advanced Technology Editor, EE Times 
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