Bipolar Integrated Circuits in 4H-SiC

Due to its wide band gap, 4H-SiC is potentially capable of sustained operation at temperatures well above 600 degrees C, but current devices are limited to lower temperatures by the stability of the metallization and passivation layers. SiC bipolar transistors are capable of operation at temperatures above 300 degrees C, as they do not have an oxide layer under high electric field and hence do not suffer from oxide reliability issues. In this paper, we describe bipolar digital integrated circuits on semi-insulating 4H-SiC that operate over a wide range of supply voltage and temperature, demonstrating the potential of SiC for high-temperature small-scale integrated-circuit applications.