China Silicon Carbide Processing Tray Manufacturers, Suppliers, Factory

Heat treatment is one of the essential and important processes in the semiconductor process. Thermal process is the process of applying thermal energy to a wafer by placing it in an environment filled with a specific gas, including oxidation/diffusion/annealing, etc.

Silicon carbide (SiC), a prominent structural ceramic, is renowned for its exceptional properties, including high-temperature strength, hardness, elastic modulus, wear resistance, thermal conductivity, and corrosion resistance. These attributes make it suitable for a wide range of applications, from traditional industrial uses in high-temperature kiln furniture, burner nozzles, heat exchangers, sealing rings, and sliding bearings, to advanced applications like ballistic armor, space mirrors, semiconductor wafer chucks, and nuclear fuel cladding.

Currently, many semiconductor devices employ mesa device structures, which are predominantly created through two types of etching: wet etching and dry etching. While the simple and rapid wet etching plays a significant role in semiconductor device fabrication, it has inherent drawbacks such as isotropic etching and poor uniformity, which result in limited control when transferring small-sized patterns. Dry etching, however, with its high anisotropy, good uniformity, and repeatability, has become prominent in semiconductor device fabrication processes. The term “dry etching” broadly refers to any non-wet etching technology used for removing surface materials and transferring micro and nano patterns, including laser etching, plasma etching, and chemical vapor etching. The dry etching discussed in this text specifically pertains to the narrow application of processes using plasma discharge—either physical or chemical—to modify material surfaces.

Silicon carbide (SiC) is a material that possesses high bond energy, similar to other hard materials like diamond and cubic boron nitride. However, the high bond energy of SiC makes it difficult to crystallize directly into ingots via traditional melting methods. Therefore, the process of growing silicon carbide crystals involves the use of vapor phase epitaxy technology.

Common thin films are mainly divided into three categories: semiconductor thin films, dielectric thin films, and metal/metal compound thin films.

We know that further epitaxial layers need to be built on top of some wafer substrates for device fabrication, typically LED light-emitting devices, which require GaAs epitaxial layers on top of silicon substrates; SiC epitaxial layers are grown on top of conductive SiC substrates for building devices such as SBDs, MOSFETs, etc. for high voltage, high current and other power applications; GaN epitaxial layers are built on top of semi-insulating SiC substrates for building HEMTs and other RF applications.