Silicon Carbide: A Power Electronics Revolution

[@ShankMods]

Silicon carbide is pretty SiC

[@toomanymarys7355]

Oh dear.

[@WetDoggo]

Ha haa 👌

[@vinniepeterss]

nice one😂

[@Nanocosm]

Ooooh do GaN

[@KarelSeeuwen]

Another great video. Being an engineer this was very easy to understand, but I think your explanation still bought a lot of easy to understand points to the Lay person. Your walk through the history of the materials and technology is also most important for the younger viewer (I do hope you have many young viewers). Thanks.

[@kamolhengkiatisak1527]

A lay person of 70 years old like me who was educated during mainframe computer age using punch cards could understand such topic as well.

[@KarelSeeuwen]

@@kuckoo9036 Things like SiC can form in many different crystalline structures, but only 1 ~ 2 can be used for electronics. The explanation of the Bandgap couldn't have been much simpler. The connection between the heat conductivity of the switching devices using SiC and the compactness / simplification of the design of the electronics and power control system was very well presented. Revisiting the material itself and walking through the process of making electronics grade SiC was very clear, and showing how the price has slowly decreased over a number of years gives anyone confidence that it is not magic, just a relatively new technology with a few teething problems. Got to go. Dinner time.

[@MarkWTK]

I'm 25, is it young? it's not related to my field at all as I'm working in finance, but learning how the world works fascinates me 😀

[@DemPilafian]

@@kuckoo9036 I'm a software developer, and I loved hearing about the manufacturing challenges of building large silicon carbide crystals. While I didn't understand 100% percent of it, I easily took in enough information that I can now explain the basics to fellow EV nerds. Awesome video!

[@shrithanosmaharaj8679]

@@kamolhengkiatisak1527 i am 22, working in SiC fabrication R&D lab

[@gigabyte2248]

Until a few months ago, I was a research fellow working on silicon carbide devices. Please allow me to leave some commentary: 1:40 - 4H and 6H are the only polytypes that can be grown as commercially-relevant bulk wafers, but 3C can be grown on silicon! 3C-on-Si is... well, it's not great. In layman's terms, the atomic spacing of 3C-SiC is different to that of Si, meaning 3C-on-Si is *full* of crystal defects. Just to pile it on, SiC fabrication processes can get up to 1600°C, but Si melts at those temperatures, meaning there's key steps you can't do properly to 3C. I am very interested to see if the 3C wafers devised by Francesco La Via and his team - where they start a 3C layer, melt off the Si and grow a new 3C wafer from the starting layer - can reach the crystal quality and practicality required for real devices. 3C has a bandgap that's not as wide as 4H or 6H, but its electron mobility is higher and it might compete with GaN in lower voltage applications. If La Via and his guys can improve their process! 2:00 - 4H has a wider bandgap than 6H and isn't much harder to grow, that's basically why we're using it. 2:08 - Tangent: the same strong atomic bonding that makes SiC hard also makes it a pain in the butt to chemically etch. Acids don't do anything to it and basically the only way to etch it is high-power plasma etching (plasma etching is common, but SiC needs a serious bombardment before any of it goes away) 2:26 - This explanation is generally pretty good. The wide bandgap of SiC means better temperature tolerance (lower intrinsic carrier concentration) and better voltage blocking, but you glossed over the higher frequency thing (and, TBH, I don't blame you). SiC has a higher electron saturation velocity than Si. Effectively, the electron speed limit is higher. *BUT* while the electron saturation velocity is higher than Si, the electron mobility is *much* lower (and don't even get me started on the hole mobility). The speed limit might be higher, but you've replaced your roads with grass fields. While SiC can *match* Si up to ~10MHz, it's beaten tidily by GaN at radio frequencies. 4:10 - While SiC as a semiconductor tolerates heat much better than Si, there's a reason why SiC transistors aren't rated to higher temperatures and it's *super important*: the oxide of the metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor. I'll cover it in detail below... 6:57 - Partially true. Above 6.5kV, we go into the world of thyristors. Which I don't know that much about, other than 'big, scary whole-wafer devices', so I'll stop. 7:32 - This stuff about heat is a bit misleading. Power semiconductor devices *always* need heat management, but once you've put them in a proper box, the environment is usually less important than what thermal management you put in. 8:09 - You kinda turned over two pages at once here, mate. Batteries do not store as much energy as a tank of fuel and getting a battery electric vehicle to travel as far as an internal combustion engine (ICE) one is very difficult. Also, paradoxically, the high efficiency of electric motors means that small inefficiencies in the car's design turn into bigger losses of range. Those pop-out door handles that sit flush to the car while driving don't really make any difference to an ICE car - which is already pissing away ~80% of its energy - but they do genuinely help with an EV. Thus, adding or saving weight translates more directly into range, which is something EV buyers prize highly while they make the adjustment to EVs and their shorter range. 8:18 - Sorry, this is a pretty big error. Also kinda complicated to unpack, but I'll give it a go. Beyond the transistor itself, building a power converter requires passive components. Capacitors and inductors. Transistors switch almost a million times per second and passive components act as energy reservoirs to smooth out voltage and/or current. The faster the switching speed, the less time the passives need to plug the gap for, and the smaller they can be. When it comes to capacitors and, particularly, inductors, a larger capacitance/inductance value means a physically larger and heavier component. Fast-switching SiC MOSFETs (they switch much faster than a Si IGBT of the same voltage/current rating) mean smaller, lighter, cheaper passive components, and this is where the bulk of the efficiency saving comes from (although faster switching normally also means lower losses in the conversion itself, so higher efficiency and less heat generated). 9:27 - Material growth *is* a major limitation of SiC. It's not the only one, and I need to do a full-length diatribe about oxides below... 10:37 - This breakdown of PVT growth is *excellent*, and I just learned a thing or two about it. This explanation makes the process sound a lot cleaner and less messy than it really is: controlling the temperature gradient around the reactor well enough to create a decent SiC ingot with no polytype inclusions is extremely difficult, and I'm not entirely convinced that another ingot growth method isn't going to replace PVT (/hottake). 11:58 - SiC wafers can be laser cut. I don't know about wafering from an ingot, but it's also possible (if a little risky) to cleave the wafer to dice it, like cutting glass. But just laser cut it. OK, I need to talk about oxides, not just because they were the topic of my PhD but also because they're the weakest part of a SiC MOSFET. When making a metal-oxide-semiconductor stack for a silicon transistor, you use the silicon as a ingredient for the oxide. Stick a clean wafer in a hot furnace with oxygen flow and it will slowly oxidise to a very clean, orderly silicon dioxide. When you try to do this with SiC, for a few nanometres you get Si oxidising to SiO2 and C burning off as CO2, but the carbon quickly ends up trapped in the oxide and at the oxide-semiconductor interface. This tanks the performance of the oxide. There are moderately-effective ways of un-tanking the performance - using NO or N2O as the oxidising gas, instead of oxygen - but they're still much worse than for Si devices. The on-state resistance of SiC MOSFETs is limited by the quality of the gate oxide and the MOSFET channel it produces. The maximum temperature is limited by the reliability of the oxide: up to 175°C, the oxide is OK, but above that its lifetime shortens drastically. My pet project during my postdoc (which I've still got a successor working on, which I am super-grateful for) was depositing SiO2 rather than oxidising the Si. You can't trap any carbon if you leave it all in the semiconductor. Instead, you have different problems, like oxygen vacancies in the oxide. I should stop. Thanks for sharing. This video is a good introduction and overview of device technologies that you don't see in popular engineering. Good stuff!

[@gigabyte2248]

Bonus comment: SiC MOSFETs are replacing Si IGBTs. MOSFETS generally operate at lower voltage/current and higher frequency than IGBTs, but SiC beats that tradeoff and allows SiC MOSFETs to match the voltage/current ratings of IGBTs, but with lower switching losses and higher switching frequencies. Similarly, the SiC Schottky diodes that replace Si PiN diodes beat the beefiness vs. speed tradeoff to switch big current/voltages faster than Si PiN diodes. But... why not SiC PiN diodes and IGBTs? MOSFETs and Schottky diodes are unipolar devices. They rely solely on electrons (or solely holes but eww, no) for conduction, which means they can pull in and push out electrons quickly to turn on and off. IGBTs and PiN diodes are bipolar devices. They rely on flooding the device with *both* electrons and holes when it's turned on, dropping the resistance but slowing things down, as you have to inject those carriers during turn-on, then extract them all out during turn-off. Critically important for bipolar devices is the lifetime of injected carriers ('minority carriers', i.e. holes in the n-doped side and electrons in the p-doped side), as the time it takes for the electrons to drop down into the valance band and fill the holes determines how far they'll travel through the device in the on-state and how long it will take to clean them all up when you try to turn off. The minority carrier lifetime in as-grown SiC is lousy. There's about 1 part-per-billion of carbon vacancies in the material, but these are states in the middle of the bandgap, making a perfect stopover point for electrons trying to recombine, so they have a disproportionate effect on minority carrier recombination. There are ways to re-process the SiC to improve the lifetime (basically by driving in extra carbon to fill the vacancies), but extra steps cost money and they've not been fully proven yet. Without lifetime enhancement, a SiC PiN diode looks like a Schottky diode, with none of the minority carrier action normally used to reduce the resistance. There's an extra complication with the IGBT. MOSFETs start with an n-doped base and stack up from there (n-type voltage blocking region, then implanted p-well and n-type & p-type contacts), whereas IGBTs start with a p-doped base. The only good SiC wafers are n-type. You have to grow your active layers, then *remove* *the* *entire* *substrate* somehow. We did this with a dry etcher, which etched a whopping 300 microns of SiC and jsut so happened to conk out a few weeks later, but you'd probably do this with chemical-mechanical polishing in the real world - a process which is becoming more popular to remove the resistance of the starting n-doped wafer. Researchers have made SiC IGBTs, though, and 10kV is just the starting point for them. There would need to be some serious work before large-area devices with high current ratings were ready for commercial use (particularly with the minority carrier lifetime enhancement stage), but 20kV *single* *devices* should be very much possible. And that's before you get on to SiC thyristors - I started designing and building a high voltage breakdown testing rig before I left, and it will go all the way up to 60kV. My old uni won't make any devices that highly-rated this year, or next year, but I wouldn't be surprised if they reach the point where they hit 60kV without the device breaking down. *This* is where I get excited about potential future applications. A 30kV IGBT is a real game-changer, and opens the door to wild new possibilities in power conversion. These are exciting times to be a power enthusiast.

[@dadude2672]

@@gigabyte2248 Very well explained but i guess the explanations above would have doubled Video length without adding more information for the average audience. Only point i think this Video could need some adjustment is your comment about the passive components as SIC helps downsizing the whole applications as you described very well above and passives add a big portion to the overall cost on HV applications.

[@theMuritz]

As a layman (mechanical engineer) I am grateful for this channel and commenters like you two here, who know what they’re talking about. Material science is a fascinating field

[@cdl0]

Brilliant. Huge thanks for dealing with this; somebody had to do it, and I'm glad it is not me. Anyway here are two more things: stacking faults and threading dislocations. These are intrinsic to the material (i.e. not due to impurities). The stacking faults are a consequence of their low energy of formation, and act as quantum wells in the material, because they are in effect an atomically thin layer of a different polytype, with a different bandgap. Normally, these would occur randomly, which has undesirable consequences for electronic characteristics; however, they have the potential to be exploited in creating devices with special characteristic if they could be fabricated intentionally in a controlled manner. On threading dislocations, these are also an unavoidable problem for any hexagonal crystal system. In SiC, they can create microscopic pipes that penetrate a device from one face to the other. Metals from electrical ohmic contacts then migrate through the pipes and short out the device, resulting in failure. Methods have been devised to ameliorate these problems, otherwise commercial products would not exist; however, it is not easy. GaN sufferes similar problems, except the threading dislocations are much smaller, and in this case spoil the optical properties, as well as causing electronic failures. Of course, we can all dream of using diamond for electronics, which would be even better. . . . However, this is yet another huge topic. ;-)

[@gigabyte2248]

@@cdl0 Threading edge dislocations (TEDs) and threading screw dislocations (TSDs) are minor defects, mainly just causing lower breakdown voltage. Basal plane dislocations (BPDs) are worse and expand into single stacking faults (SSF) that add a lot of resistance to the device. I think these are the only relevant 'stacking faults'. Micropipes are absolute killers, like you said, and have mostly been eliminated from modern SiC wafers. BPDs and their expansion into SSF are nuts. If there's enough energy available (from electron-hole pairs recombining), the BPD expands into a SSF from its root at the interface between the original wafer and epilayer. This can happen at room temperature. Yes, SiC can change its crystal structure at room temperature. This usually happens in bipolar devices (PiN diodes and IGBTs) and is one of two main reasons why these devices aren't out there yet (the other is short minority carrier lifetime: injected electrons & holes recombine so fast that the device is practically unipolar). There are three ways to attack this problem. 1. Grow a wafer with fewer BPDs. Easier said than done. 2. Get the epilayer growth conditions right to convert BPDs at the surface of the wafer into TEDs (or is it TSDs?) in the epilayer. TEDs(/TSDs) aren't great, but they're better than BPDs! 3. Stop the electron-hole pairs from reaching the interface. Commercial epilayers have a highly doped layer at the bottom, with the dopants causing the recombination to happen super-quickly. This prevents holes from the top of the device reaching the root of the BPDs and causing them to expand. At least in theory. I wanted to study bipolar devices and bipolar degradation suppression a bit more, but the funding wasn't there and it was time to move on. More progress is bound to be made, if for no other reason than SiC PiN diodes (and IGBTs) would be awesome.

[@gregorymalchuk272]

John Atanasoff, inventor of the Atanasoff-Berry computer, one of the very early stored program digital electronic computers, talked in a speech at the Computer History Museum about theorizing about building transistors out of silicon carbide as far back as the 1930s. He knew that both galena (lead sulfide) and silicon carbide could serve as a cat's whisker crystal detector in a radio set. When they were improperly adjusted, they would oscillate, and oscillation means gain/amplification. Interesting that silicon carbide semiconductors are now a commercial product. Atanasoff envisioned making them out of what we would call nanowires.

[@Bialy_1]

Its kinda amazing that someone made a "Computer History Museum" so many years before the first computer was actualy made... "and oscillation means gain/amplification." ekhm?! What? An amplifier is a circuit which amplifies the weak signal and raises the amplitude of the signal. An oscillator is a circuit which generates the AC waveforms of particular frequency for providing source to an electronic circuit.

[@Bialy_1]

Also i gonna quote you Stanisław Lem: "No predictions came true. It turned out that only Antoni Gołubiew was right, who liked to repeat that the future lies in the fact that “everything is different” - differently than we imagine. And it really is. Except otherwise - it does not mean either greater or more terrible. Just different." And Stanisław Lem is a Polish Sci-Fi writer that in his books predicted: Internet, Google, e-books, audiobooks, tablets, smartphones, 3D printing, Virtual Reality...

[@cFyugThCzvAqYaGmxRgfCKTuvHMEjQ]

About carbide hardness: tungsten carbide is used in good ballpoint and gel roller pens as the ball. It sees a lot of wear and needs to remain smooth and spherical to apply ink evenly

[@stephenkikzass]

@@Ufbwgeufjdo I recall seeing a video on youtube about how far a pen an write before running out of ink. Divide that distance by the circumference of the ballpoint and you have your answer haha

[@kayakMike1000]

Wouldn't steel be iron carbide?

[@brainletmong6302]

@@kayakMike1000 in the same way water is hydric acid, technically yes. Always a question of lattice arrangements etc.

[@NJgotPOWAAA72]

Hey Asianometry, just wanted to give a quick thank you for your videos. As a new salesperson to the semiconductor industry, these videos are extremely helpful on providing info about the semiconductor industry as a whole, as well as explaining the different technologies/processes involved. Thanks again and keep it up!

[@Basil-the-Frog]

Please feel free to subscribe from your company since it is benefitting. I'm sure it is in the budget!💲

[@PeterKese]

Wonderful! Can you also explain the Galium Nitride (GAN) transistors and how they compare to Silicon Carbide and other power switching devices. GANs are apparently also finding their way into power electronics lately.

[@Palmit_]

GN Limited to diodes. the galium in the name idicates why. very ,very ,very limited and precise operating range. requiring a whole lot more cooling/Temp tech in same surface area. too expensive at this time to research and implement commercially. Universities are working on it though.

[@kenoliver8913]

GaN is best for low voltage high current applications (eg chargers). That's because gallium nitride transistors are extremely efficient (so yuo can make them smaller and cheaper for a given power) but they have even lower "breakthrough" voltage than silicon, and far lower than SiC.

[@luke144]

Gallium arsenide is showing up again as well.

[@davidgunther8428]

GaN devices are extremely common in LEDs and are the basis of white LED lights, where they get hot, easily 150C. They have uses in power devices too, but like other III-V semiconductors don't have a good native passivation layer, ie MOSFET- like devices aren't easy to make with them. GaN and SiC are somewhat similar in electrical characteristics, but which becomes more widely used will be whichever one industry gets the most experience working with first. Silicon carbide outperforming silicon devices is REALLY significant because there are decades more experience with silicon, and getting silicon carbide devices to preform up to its theoretical potential is quite difficult.

[@RNA0ROGER]

@@Palmit_ GaN fets are already on the market

[@Dr_Petey_Wheatstraw]

Consistently impressed with how you distill technical topics into their essence, explaining enough detail that a scientist can understand while a layperson can follow along. Another disruptive application of SiC is in electric kilns, nichrome wire barely gets to 1200C, SiC filaments can get up to 1600C. Would be critical for decarbonizing heavy industry like cement and aluminum. One of the issues in this field is also with scale of heater elements.

[@Keavon]

You often mention "packaging" which means something different than what most people normally would understand it to be (cardboard boxes and styrofoam). Can you do a video on the meaning of "packaging" throughout the semiconductor industry?

[@simonlinser8286]

i think most people who are into this subject even on a superficial level can figure out that the package means something different. if you've ever studied circuits or built them you know that ICs and transistors come in different packages sometimes with different pin outs even though they have the same chip inside of them.

[@Hortifox_the_gardener]

It is a very interesting topic that recently evolved into so much more than "somewhat specialised copany glues chip onto circuit board in Malaysia" with 3D packaging, chip stacking and 3D via connections.

[@mrnarason]

I took one condensed matter/solid state physics course in college and this video was very digestible, I would say even for people without the physics background.

[@ElectricNed]

@7:41 I don't think many people in the world would recognize that! It's the underside of an older Proterra bus. Having worked on them in wintry cities, I can confirm that those are some harsh conditions indeed.

[@matthewbeasley7765]

Multiple people have mentioned doing a video on GaN, I'd love that too. Another worthwhile topic relates to that graph about growth in the power electronics device use - the insane backlog in getting devices. There a cracks in the supply / demand when it comes to processors and other devices, but the high backlogs on power electronics looks solid.

[@artcamp7]

well researched and surprisingly interesting as always

[@anonimuse6553]

Another wonderful essay from Jon at Asianometry. I always feel so much wiser after seeing or hearing (sometimes I just listen) to his well choreographed presentations. This wisdom doesn't last long but it's nice while it does ☺. Maybe when I get my silicon-carbide brain implant that will change 🤪

[@anupamjain3152]

Another masterful episode....Stories such as these, and the one on MEMS bring to light the lesser-known, but equally vital components that are starting to underpin modern lives. Thank you for this episode!

[@dadude2672]

Following you already a long time and was wondering when you do the video about one of the most powerful changes in the industry for high power applications. I am working for an SiC Semiconductor manufacturer and i think you did a great job explaining the technology. Short correction traditional silicon mosfets work up to 100V max.

[@renatoberaldo2335]

Finally SiC!!!! .. Im Ph.D student and I'm working with silicon carbide.. Finally a video about that!

[@chidambaramramesh7638]

Very nice summary, and a great starting-point for anyone starting to study SiC!

[@dizzydazza]

Awesome video as usual! 👍 Thank you so much.. Hope you can do a video about Aixtron, very interesting company in this space too!

[@GuyIncognito764]

Excellent! I used to work for one of the big utility solar companies. Getting PV string sizes up to 3kV (from 1.5 today) dropped total system cost over 10%. One limiting factor was the silicon transistors in current inverters so this could address that.

[@SuperCuriousFox]

Very nice video! I'd like to add that amorphous SiC also has great potential in developing photonic circuitry due to its high refractive index contrast with silicon dioxide, along with very tunable absorption characteristics. Interesting applications for the telecom industry, as well as some quantum internet and computing applications (due to adhering well to diamond which is popular for single photon emitters).

[@jjoonathan7178]

I AM OUT OF CONTROL AND SILICON CARBIDE IS TO BLAME!!!

[@williambrasky3891]

Got a gallon!

[@Elcheecho]

Isn’t this the opposite of the point of the video?

[@michael_r]

Maybe you need more cowbell.

[@williambrasky3891]

@@Elcheecho Nope, just a bad batch of the ole 'bide. Shit's not only openly doped, the yields are crap. Where better to market such busted wares than the streets?

[@thunderb00m]

15:10 future applications might crop up ... in the future I felt that so hard because I've said stuff like that out loud so many times. Great video, just trigger my OCD with the last bit there :)

[@andersjjensen]

You're a godsend Jon! You bring up everything I didn't know I wanted to know :D

[@richardnicklin654]

I have to say, I particularly enjoyed this episode, the mix of science, applied technology and economics was excellent and well delivered.

[@ApurvaSukant]

The meme jokes may be misaligned with your demographic. The 'water succeeds gasoline' joke is perfectly aligned with the same. Good video, had a couple chuckles watching it!

[@LuisAldamiz]

Amazing! I was wondering as you talked if these Soviet inventions contributed to the (relative) success of the Venera probes. Nice that you mentioned later that they did indeed.

[@CompleteAnimation]

You like rocks and the Loki series? You are just full of hot takes! Very bold!

[@tjmoseley5108]

Great video! I want to see more SiC stories

[@BertPdeboy]

Love your videos about the modern electrical components! Funny memetics too 👌 Any intention to talk about Gallium-Nitride (GaN) rectifiers? They kinda took the charger market by storm in my opinion (not that I closely followed the space), and saw in your graph that their production cost matches Silicon based electronic components. Would love to hear your research about the topic! Scrolling through the comments I'm not the only one with this question. I didn't intend to join some kind of gang-up. x)

[@Aermydach]

3:32 ". . . become like internet commenters and cannot switch off, becoming useless." Brutal! I love it ROFL.

[@AdityaChaudhary-oo7pr]

Another amazing and informative video !!! Thanks Brother !!

[@PlanetFrosty]

Great job covering this challenging subject.

[@rondlh20]

5:45 What a beautiful sine wave :D

[@emptyshirt]

this is one of the best channels on youtube, it's got memes, it's got technical information, it's got frequent uploads, its got good production

[@marcussassan]

Your videos are very thorough and well made

[@danhoffman9232]

What suprised me about this is that the video infered Silicon Carbide was resent. But Texas Instruments has been building commercial products out of it for over 10 years. They do make a lot of power electronics out of it but they also make Microcontrollers and CPUs and many other items.

[@Basil-the-Frog]

The microcontrollers and CPUs are almost certainly not made from Silicon Carbide (SiC) based on what I've seen here. Of course, there might be military/satellite applications I have not heard of.

[@fazewang]

I make the wafers in the lab at Wolfspeed. Very easy to understand and build.

[@Retotion]

I work in the semiconductor industry and we are currently experimenting with improved SiC chemical mechanical polishing methods :)

[@avishjha4030]

Ooh, I'm quick today!

[@wilurbean]

You forgot one big thing. Heat radiates with the 4th power, so a chip that can get twice as hot, can radiate 16× the power. 150V vs 900V is a 6× increase. Which means a 1300× fold increase in heat dissipation, but power rises with the square, for a net of H_dis = V²

[@devod123]

Dude you make great content and arent super narcissistic or annoying. Props

[@svn0653able]

Excellent video as always. Microsemi was acquired by Microchip Technology in 2018

[@shawnmansfield3294]

“I love rocks”…subscribed!

[@eduardoforneck3335]

Great video, could you do a video about GaN?

[@stevenpelayo9418]

Great video! Can you follow up with a greater discussion on the players within the SiC supply chain? Everything from furnace suppliers, through wafer makers, device manufacturers, and inverter suppliers. Furthermore, I know China is aggressively moving into SiC and GaN. I would love to hear your assessment of the key players there too.

[@suprithAnCom]

Your voice is so soothing...☺️

[@irwainnornossa4605]

Videos like these are the reason why I'm on YT. Some people like to watch…explicit content (on different sites), but this kind of content is much better. Food for hungry mind.

[@god4943]

Thank you Mr.Bane for ur wisdom

[@bobofthestorm]

"I love rocks." Jesus Christ, they're MINERALS!

[@aloksharma4611]

Thanks!

[@oldsynner]

That was a very clear explanation -- great work!

[@djnavari]

Fantastic video good technical overview of the difficulty of manufacturing these components👍👍🏆

[@silberlinie]

In 6:08 you must indicate the sign for alternating current in the input. Not like here in the picture a plus and a minus.

[@peterjones596]

Thank you for all of your work, it's well explained and totally understandable.

[@TheSateef]

You are a very knowledgeable guy, thanks for all the great videos

[@KomradZX1989]

Your subtle stab at internet commenters made me laugh 😂. And yet here I am commenting again! Great video! Just joined your newsletter too! Love all your hard work 🥰

[@craigwood6561]

Thanks

[@rajdeep7124]

great Video. Please also make videos for GaN.

[@NikitaLab]

Hey it’s my car! Another excellent video.

[@christopherleubner6633]

SiC mosfets are unique in that they can function at high temperatures, high voltages, and in high gamma radiation fields. ❤

[@mikecounsell]

Thanks. great vid.

[@first-thoughtgiver-of-will2456]

Awesome! I wonder if this'll help lead to a doped graphene semiconductor?

[@Walczyk]

what was the video where john shows off his 65w charger? i thought it was this video

[@kpit321]

Superb!! Thanks a lot 🙏🙏 curious about how much time you spent making it

[@cbuchner1]

The alternating current diagram looked a little wonky. But good work overall!

[@Real_Tim_S]

Looking forwards to the GaN video...

[@nhibbs3]

You should do a similar video for GaN

[@Jimblefy]

Super interesting. Thank you.

[@fg4hg594]

definitely something to think before you sleep about :)

[@d.jensen5153]

Platelets and valence both have a long 'a' sound, like the a in bake.

[@hardrays]

so does the similar word, balance. youve been wrong you whole life

[@Erik-gg2vb]

I probably have 25 lbs. of Silicon carbide cutting tools. Solid drill bits, endmills and tool inserts. The stuff revolutionized the metal working industry when it can out. I would think that is where most is used.

[@davidb6576]

It's much more likely that you have *tungsten* carbide tools, not silicon. OTOH, you likely have SiC "wet or dry" sanding paper. There's a few other carbides used in tooling (like vanadium), but I've not heard of SiC tools like endmills and drills, etc. And just 'cause it's YT, and there's always someone one-upping somebody else, I have about 250lbs of TC tooling in my shop. Maybe more...

[@Erik-gg2vb]

@@davidb6576 My bad, Tungsten carbide is correct.

[@randydewees7338]

I did ultra-precision (Single Point Diamond Turning - SPDT) machining of optics in a research environment. I also processed a lot of chemical vapor deposited (CVD) SiC into optics for uncooled high energy laser optical component development. A diamond tool for SPDT uses a gem quality natural or synthetic single crystal diamond, very precisely shaped, to ductile machine at near atomic levels. These are very expensive and delicate. And can't be used on carbide forming metals like steel. Since I had heaps of CVD SiC I experimented with machining with it as the cutting bit. Indifferent results because of the polycrystalline nature of the CVD SiC. Single crystal SiC I would think could substitute for diamond for less critical applications, but might be really beneficial for ultra-precision machining carbide forming materials like steel.

[@Erik-gg2vb]

@@randydewees7338 Yes, and then all the Tungsten Carbide tools went to very hard CVD coatings. I lost count of how many have been developed. I know Titanium Nitride is gold in color. Then there is black, gray, all kinds making them last and perform even better.

[@guruG509]

You can do another video on Gallium Nitride and power electronics

[@cliffkuo3787]

Wow Tansui, from Taiwan as well ?

[@corneliushojl7994]

dear asianometry He did not know this quality of silicon carbide that he only used in carpentry sandpaper, quite a surprise. Just making a bit of a silly proposal, vacuum valves do that job just as well with cheaper technology but just the miniaturized problem. Is there any possible alternative to this? I am a big fan of valves. Thank you

[@Ai-vq8rj]

is there a silicon carbide mosfet or transistor for Audio amplifier project?...it seems there is only N-channel siC i have not seen a P-channel siC...

[@gonzalomorenoandonaegui2052]

What material could replace or enhance Silicon Carbide based semiconductors? Graphene nanotubes ?

[@GaryBickford]

I wonder if instead of trying to create bulk solid boules, a better method might be to use vapor deposition on to a carefullly designed surface and a gradient in temperature, pH, electrical or magnetic field, etc., that has a correct structure to encourage the SiC crystal to grow in two dimensions as the surface moves past the vapor source. This could create very thin SiC wafers, or even thicker ones, and produce very low defects while also eliminating the need to slice wafers from a solid. An automated system might be composed of wafer-sized plates linked on a "chain" that recirculates, with wafers being created on each plate which after cooling etc. gets lifted off for further processing, while the chain goes around again.

[@walterlyzohub8112]

I’m looking forward for large scale space based manufacturing. This would be an advantageous environment for lots of products like this one. Nanotubes is also another potential product for this environment.

[@GaryBickford]

@@walterlyzohub8112 Yes. One product already proven for space manufacturing is an optical fiber called ZBLAN. This fiber has been manufactured on the ISS already, and test pieces distributed to potential customers. ZBLAN offers dramatically improved transparency and optical data throughput vs. all other materials, but can only be made in microgravity. The test converted 2 kg of material into thousands of dollars of optical fiber. The primary use of this fiber is anticipated to be in supercomputer data pathways. Another potential area of production is modifying the epigenetics or biological (plant or animal) stem cells. Preliminary research has shown that microgravity affect stem cells. encouraging them to adapt to stressors rapidly. Then clones of those plants retain the new abilities. Overall I believe a variety of adapted biological processes will be among the targets of space mfg. But one area I anticipate to become very important will be IC chip manufacturing and possible crystal growth. Microgravity offers crystal production advantages in this area similar to that of ZBLAN, potentially allowing new substrates and doping and printing processes with higher precision and repeatability. And the vacuum level in orbit is easily made to be much cleaner than any lab on Earth that contains air, potentially reducing defects and improving yields. I believe that in 10-30 years a wide range of new technologies will be possible only due to microgravity manufacturing.

[@Basil-the-Frog]

@@GaryBickford There is a nice article about this on the English Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZBLAN (search for Fiber Optics).

[@GaryBickford]

@@Basil-the-Frog ZBLAN - cool, I'm familiar with that for use in fiber optics! A company I'm associated with was one of the early funders of Made In Space, which sent the first fiber fabricator to the ISS and made ZBLAN fiber in microgravity. This (for those readers who don't know) is necessary to keep the ingredients from selling out and crystalizing wrong, making poor quality fiber. I wasn't aware of the use for planar crystals though. I'll read up on it, thanks!

[@Palmit_]

@Asianometry 3:30 😂😂😂😂😂 you owe me new sides!!

[@mvadu]

Very informative video.. A follow up with GaN power electronics? 🤔

[@Urgelt]

I enjoyed your review of silicon carbide transistors, fascinating stuff. Tesla, it turns out, has pioneered all sorts of interesting tech: dry-coating battery electrodes, carbon fiber tension wrapping for high-speed rotors, Dojo, neural net chips for automotive use (much superior to GPUs), vision-only vehicle autonomy (no lidar, radar, or sonar sensors needed), heat pumps for HVAC in vehicles (with remarkable integration for both cooling and heating needs), auto-labeling for objects in video feeds (vast reduction in labeling manpower requirements), accurate distance estimation for objects in video feeds (again without lidar, radar or sonar), unified 3-D virtual simulation of a car's environment from pixel-based video feeds, Megapack batteries to replace gas peaker plants for grid utilities, Autobidder software which automatically buys and sells power for a utility to keep its grid stable (millisecond response times), and more. Tesla pioneered 46x80 mm cylindrical battery cells for automotive use, solving many cooling and manufacturing difficulties with this larger cell format - and then used the cells as structural elements to enable deletion of hundreds of underbody parts. This is just a sampling, really. AI Day should happen sometime this fall at Tesla. I'm expecting to hear about their progress with Dojo, FSD, and maybe even see an early prototype of a humanoid robot which uses AI to recognize objects and navigate in the real world. Hopefully!

[@MrFujinko]

What is this? Tesla ad? You a shareholder?

[@Urgelt]

@@MrFujinko This channel has delivered content concerning AI - it's one of the author's areas of interest. Some exciting things are happening in this field at Tesla. I'm merely interested in the author's opinions concerning Tesla's AI hardware and software engineering.

[@bariole]

Why is SiC preferedable to diamond? Most of the electric caracteristics seem shared -> both are wide gap insulators with greath thermal stability. I was under inpression that diamond wafer production is well understood process in 2022.

[@cdl0]

The problem with diamond for electronics is lack of a solid native oxide for fabricating insulated layers, and lack of n-type doping. The only p-type dopant also has a fairly high activation energy. If these problems could be solved, the diamond would be much better than anything else.

[@leflavius_nl5370]

They're not rocks, Marie. They're minerals!

[@cherubin7th]

This meteoroid really looks alien.

[@xntumrfo9ivrnwf]

Hey, what is the source for the charts near the end (e.g. Si vs SiC vs GaN inverter cost breakdown)? Thanks and great video!

[@alpenfoxvideo7255]

I knew the motors and inverter were the reason why the model 3 was more energy efficient than smaller cars... but never imagined it was a new type of gate material

[@johndododoe1411]

Not gate, substrate.

[@tomwills1163]

Do you think we will see this tech come to CPUs?

[@JanKanis]

8:41 "Silicon-based power electronics merely adopted the heat. Silicon carbide was born in it, molded by it." The quote sounds like a paraphrase of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality ch 119: "You dealt with the crap so you could go back to real life. You're not the kind of crazy that builds a castle out of the crap and lives there."

[@Basil-the-Frog]

It is supposed to sound like something Bane (who is on the screen) would say. It does. HP works also.

[@patrickgono6043]

@5:51 sorry, but this is probably the worst sine I've ever seen. Apart from that, really cool video, I greatly enjoyed, as always! Thanks!

[@just4therecord]

What is a SiC motor? (For EVs)

[@TreyVaswal]

"...and let it burrrrrn." lol

[@fredericjuliard4261]

Merci.

[@ChrisHarmon1]

I wonder what the cycle life is compared to the standard mosfet?

[@Paulkjoss]

“Let it burrrrn”

[@Bialy_1]

You need to ignore the second "c" when you reading the name Czochralski. That "c" before "h"was borowed from Latin(for Greek words...) and most likely its only left in Polish nowdays to make writing in Polish even harder as you need to remember "Latin-Greek" words where you need to write it when in most Polish dialects there is no difference in reading "ch" and "h"...

[@Horesmi]

But can you use it to switch the Gauss gun coils?

[@icwiz]

I agree Loki was great!

[@pjacobsen1000]

"They become like internet commenters and cannot switch off, becoming useless". 😅

[@chungchihsu2000]

SiC crystal growth is a nightmare, high growth temperature 2,500°C, low growth rate 200 um/hr, high defect density 10e5/cm2, and impossible to improve. Poor crystal quality gives low device yield. Good luck to those who are in.

[@user-er8tr9kt8l]

There are 100.000 molecules where some chemists claim that they could cange soo many things for soo good but somehow its allways the well known ones a little bit better applied that do the job. And of course all the know-how sticks in chemical engineering anyway. *No am no chemical engineer (nor a chemist). Thats just how it ist.