Large Area Platform Technology for Small Diameter Silicon Carbide

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is intended to demonstrate the fabrication of multiple, unconventionally small diameter, and foundry incompatible wafers on a single, large-area 8-inch substrate. The success of this effort will bring the benefits offered by devices made from such wafers to the global community at affordable cost. The superior thermo-mechanical properties of silicon carbide have made it a material of choice for use as sensors in harsh environments. However, the lack of profit incentive due to high substrate cost, small diameter (implying high production cost per unit volume), and high capital equipment cost have combined to inhibit industry interest in its global commercialization. A recently patented wafer platform technology offers four immediate crucial benefits: 1) It significantly reduces the high production cost by an order of magnitude to make silicon carbide based sensors economically viable and competitive; 2) It utilizes semiconductor-on-insulator technology to improve silicon carbide sensor functionality at 600oC over pn-junction based silicon carbide sensors, which suffer from leakage current as it approaches 500C; 3) A large-area (8-inch) platform technology will significantly increase industry confidence toward global commercialization; and 4) It opens a new technology growth path toward integrated micro-systems packaging. Potential commercial applications a wide variety of electronic and opto-electronic sensors. The domestic sensors and instrumentation market in 2000 was $49 billion at an annual growth rate of 13.5%, Worldwide Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMs) market was $14.2 billion, expected to reach $30.4 billion with at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21% in 2004, of which the Silicon Carbide MEMs; worldwide market is expected to reach $6 billion by 2005 (Sensors magazine, July 2001).