China Etching equipment Manufacturers, Suppliers, Factory

Within the silicon carbide (SiC) industry chain, substrate suppliers hold significant leverage, primarily due to value distribution. SiC substrates account for 47% of the total value, followed by epitaxial layers at 23%, while device design and manufacturing constitute the remaining 30%. This inverted value chain stems from the high technological barriers inherent to substrate and epitaxial layer production. Three major challenges plague SiC substrate growth: stringent growth conditions, slow growth rates, and demanding crystallographic requirements. These complexities contribute to increased processing difficulty, ultimately resulting in low product yields and high costs. Furthermore, the epitaxial layer’s thickness and doping concentration are critical parameters directly impacting the final device performance.

As technology nodes continue to shrink, the formation of ultra-shallow junctions presents significant challenges. Thermal annealing processes including Rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and flash lamp annealing (FLA) are vital techniques that maintain high impurity activation rates while minimizing diffusion, ensuring optimal device performance.

Worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment increased 5 percent from $102.6 billion in 2021 to an all-time record of $107.6 billion last year, SEMI, the industry association representing the global electronics design and manufacturing supply chain.

Silicon carbide (SiC) ceramic materials possess a range of excellent properties, including high-temperature strength, strong oxidation resistance, superior wear resistance, thermal stability, low thermal expansion coefficient, high thermal conductivity, high hardness, thermal shock resistance, and chemical corrosion resistance. These characteristics make SiC ceramics increasingly applicable in various fields such as automotive, mechanical and chemical industries, environmental protection, space technology, information electronics, and energy. SiC ceramics have become an irreplaceable structural ceramic material in many industrial sectors due to their outstanding performance.

The single crystal growth furnace is composed of six key systems that work in harmony to ensure efficient and high-quality crystal growth.

SiC's own characteristics determine its single crystal growth is more difficult. Due to the absence of Si:C=1:1 liquid phase at atmospheric pressure, the more mature growth process adopted by the mainstream of the semiconductor industry can not be used to grow the more mature growth method-straight pulling method, the descending crucible method and other methods for growth. After theoretical calculations, only when the pressure is greater than 105 atm and the temperature is higher than 3200 ℃, can we get the stoichiometric ratio of Si:C = 1:1 solution. pvt method is currently one of the more mainstream methods.