RADIATION AND ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE EFFECTS ON SILICON CARBIDE BASED ELECTRONICS

SILICON CARBIDE (SIC) IS A SEMICONDUCTOR THAT POSSESSES A UNIQUE COMBINATION OF PHYSICAL AND ELECTRONIC PROPERTIES THAT MAKE DEVICES PRODUCED FROM THIS MATERIAL INTRINSICALLY RADIATION AND ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE (EMP) RESISTANT. IN ADDITION, SIC DEVICES CAN OPERATE AT VERY HIGH TEMPERATURES AND FREQUENCIES AT HIGH POWER. RECENT RESEARCHON SIC HAS RESULTED IN THE FABRICATION OF METAL-OXIDE-SEMICONDUCTOR FIELD-EFFECT TRANSISTORS (FETS) WITH VERY GOOD CURRENT-VOLTAGE CHARACTERISTICS AT TEMPERATURES AS HIGH AS 650 DEGREES C. VERY GOOD QUALITY METAL-SEMICONDUCTORS FETS & P-N JUNCTION DIODES ALSO HAVE BEENPRODUCED RECENTLY FOR SIC. PAST LIMITED RESEARCH CONCERNING RADIATIONRESISTANCE OF SIC DEVICES PRODUCED RATHER POOR QUALITY RESULTS. NEVERTHELESS, THE SIC DEVICES WERE MORE RADIATION RESISTANT THAN SIMILAR SI DEVICES BY A FACTOR OF 4 TO 100 (DEPENDING ON THE DEVICE AND RADIATION SOURCE). IN THIS INVESTIGATION, HIGH QUALITY SIC-BASED ELECTRONIC DEVICES ARE BEING DEVELOPED THAT ARE AT LEAST OR MORE RADIATION RESISTANT THAN THE EARLY DEVICES. PRELIMINARY EMP (VOLTAGE PULSE) AND RADIATION (TOTAL GAMMA DOSE) EXPERIMENTS ARE BEING PERFORMED. DESIGN AND PROCESSING PARAMETERS ARE BEING INVESTIGATED TO INCREASE THE HARDNESS OF SIC DEVICES LIMITED BY INTERFACES WITH OTHER MATERIALS (E.G. SILICON DIOXIDE).