5-6 SiC Electronic Devices and Circuits

This section briefly summarizes a variety of SiC electronic device designs broken down by major application areas. SiC process and material technology issues limiting the capabilities of various SiC device topologies are highlighted as key issues to be addressed in further SiC technology maturation. Throughout this section, it should become apparent to the reader that the most difficult general challenge preventing SiC electronics from fully attaining beneficial capabilities is attaining long-term high operational reliability, while operating in previously unattained temperature and power density regimes. Because many device reliability limitations can be traced to fundamental material and junction/interface issues already mentioned in Sections 5.4 and 5.5, efforts to enable useful (i.e., reliable) SiC electronics should focus on improvements to these fundamental areas.