OSIRIS will bring in two innovations to address both the material properties and the present cost issue. Firstly, a 30% rise in the thermal conductivity of SiC wafers has recently been demonstrated by OSIRIS partners, through the use of selected isotopes for the material constituents, which this project can make an industrial reality. Secondly, it is proposed to use the cheaper silicon carbide substrates as a “handle” for microwave Gallium Nitride (GaN) devices, growing these devices on top of a highly resistive isotopic SiC layer. Indeed, in the example of microwave devices, most of substrate material (back of the device) has to be lapped away at process completion and is lost, so using a cheaper substrate wafer brings a major overall cost saving. These innovations will greatly contribute to improving overall device power performance, particularly by decreasing junction temperature (power efficiency, robustness, footprint) and reducing the production cost, also for (microwave) GaN devices.
Main publication at the origin of this project : Thermal conductivity of isotopically enriched silicon carbide
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