Applied Materials Develops New Technologies for Silicon Carbide Chipmakers

Applied Materials, Inc. announced new products that help enable the world’s leading silicon carbide (SiC) chipmakers to transition from 150mm wafer production to 200mm production, which approximately doubles die output per wafer, to help satisfy the world’s growing demand for premium electric vehicle powertrains.

SiC power semiconductors are in high demand because they help efficiently convert battery power to torque, thereby increasing vehicle performance and range. Compared to silicon, SiC is inherently harder with natural defects that can lead to degradation of electrical performance, power efficiency, reliability and yield. Advanced materials engineering is needed to optimize raw wafers for production and build circuits with minimum damage to the crystal lattice.

“To fuel the computer revolution, chipmakers moved to ever-larger wafer sizes, dramatically increasing chip output to satisfy burgeoning global demand,” said Sundar Ramamurthy, group VP and GM of the ICAPS group at Applied Materials. “Today we are in the early stages of another revolution that will benefit from Applied’s expertise in materials engineering at an industrial scale.”

“Electrification of the transportation industry is a rising trend, and we are accelerating this inflection point by leading the global transition from silicon to silicon carbide with our Wolfspeed technology,” said Gregg Lowe, president and CEO of Cree, Inc. “Delivering the highest-performing silicon carbide power devices on larger 200mm wafers enables us to increase end-customer value and meet growing demand.”

“Applied’s support in helping speed qualification of 200mm processes in Albany and multi-equipment installations at our Mohawk Valley Fab is expediting this transition,” Lowe added.

SiC wafer surface quality is critically important to SiC device fabrication as any defects on the surface of the wafer will migrate through the subsequent layers. To produce uniform wafers with the highest quality surfaces, Applied has developed the Mirra Durum CMP system, which integrates polishing, measurement of material removal, cleaning and drying in a single system. The new system has demonstrated a 50X reduction in finished wafer surface roughness as compared to mechanically grinded SiC wafers and a 3X reduction in roughness compared to batch CMP processing systems.

During SiC chip fabrication, ion implantation places dopants within the material to help enable and direct the flow of current within the high power producing circuits. The density and hardness of SiC material makes it challenging to inject, accurately place and activate the dopants while minimizing damage to the crystal lattice which reduces performance and power efficiency. Applied has solved this challenge with its new VIISta 900 3D hot ion implant system for 150mm and 200mm SiC wafers. The hot implant technology injects ions with minimal damage to the lattice structure, resulting in a more than 40X reduction in resistivity compared to implant at room temperature.