British to Investigate Silicon Carbide
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 7/1/1998
British to Investigate Silicon Carbide
The British
government's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has made a grant of $1
million to a consortium of UK researchers who aim to make the UK work with this material
competitive with that of the rest of Europe. The commercial partners are contributing more
than $1 million. The main limitation to the use of this material in power devices has been
crystal defects that limit the size of high-quality silicon carbide crystals that can be
obtained. This limiting size has been considerably increased in the past few years. Mark
Johnson of the University of Newcastle is leading the academic work in collaboration with
the Defense Evaluation Research Agency (Malvern, UK), Mitel (formerly GEC Plessey
Semiconductors), the GEC Alsthom Engineering Research Center, AEA Technology, Samelab and
GEC Marconi Materials Technology. ABB leads the European work on silicon carbide for
high-power and high-temperature applications in Sweden, but Siemens is also involved in
Germany.
