Cree has released its Zero Micropipe (ZMP) 100-mm, n-type silicon carbide (SiC) substrates. “The transition to production of Cree’s 100-mm ZMP substrate technology is an important step to the wide-scale industry adoption of SiC as the material of choice for high-power switching components,” stated Cengiz Balkas, Ph.D., Cree vice president and general manager for materials. “The integration of this technology across other Cree product lines is expected to accelerate the adoption of SiC as a high-volume, production-ready material platform.”
Micropipes, which are crystalline defects in SiC, have been present in nearly all SiC wafers manufactured and sold by commercial substrate vendors until recently. Micropipes cannot only decrease the number of usable electronic devices produced per wafer, but can also negatively affect performance parameters of each device produced. Through previous research and development efforts at Cree, partially funded by the U.S. Army and DARPA, the density of these defects has been dramatically reduced.