An image sensor based on wide band gap silicon carbide (SiC) has the merits of high temperature operation and ultraviolet (UV) detection. To realize a SiC-based image sensor the challenge of opto-electronic on-chip integration of SiC photodetectors and digital electronic circuits must be addressed. Here, we demonstrate a novel SiC image sensor based on our in-house bipolar technology. The sensing part has 256 ( $16\times 16$ ) pixels. The digital circuit part for row and column selection contains two 4-to-16 decoders and one 8-bit counter. The digital circuits are designed in transistor-transistor logic (TTL). The entire circuit has 1959 transistors. It is the first demonstration of SiC opto-electronic on-chip integration. The function of the image sensor up to 400 degrees C has been verified by taking photos of the spatial patterns masked from UV light. The image sensor would play a significant role in UV photography, which has important applications in astronomy, clinics, combustion detection and art.

This paper reports an industry standard monolithic 555-timer circuit designed and fabricated in the in-house silicon carbide (SiC) low-voltage bipolar technology. This paper demonstrates the 555-timer integrated circuits (ICs) characterization in both astable and monostable modes of operation, with a supply voltage of 15 V over the wide temperature range of 25 degrees C-500 degrees C. Nonmonotonic temperature dependence was observed for the 555-timer IC frequency, rise time, fall-time, and power dissipation.

This paper reports an industry standard monolithic 555-timer circuit designed and fabricated in the in-house silicon carbide (SiC) low-voltage bipolar technology. The paper demonstrates the 555-timer ICs characterization in both astable and monostable modes of operation, with a supply voltage of 15 V over the wide temperature range of 25 to 500°C. Nonmonotonictemperature dependence was observed for the 555-timer IC frequency, rise-time, fall-time, and power dissipation.

This letter presents the design, fabrication, and characterization of a 4H-SiC n-p-n bipolar junction transistor as a switch controlling an on-chip integrated p-i-n photodiode. The transistor and photodiode share the same epitaxial layers and topside contacts for each terminal. By connecting the collector of the transistor and the anode of the photodiode, the photo current from the photodiode is switched off at low base voltage (cutoff region of the transistor) and switched on at high base voltage (saturation region of the transistor). The transfer voltage of the circuit decreases as the ambient temperature increases (2 mV/degrees C). Both the on-state and off-state current of the circuit have a positive temperature coefficient and the on/off ratio is >80 at temperature ranged from 25 degrees C to 400 degrees C. It is proposed that the on/off ratio can be increased by similar to 1000 times by adding a light blocking layer on the transistor to reduce light induced off-state current in the circuit.

This paper presents our in-house fabricated 4H-SiC n-p-n phototransistors. The wafer mapping of the phototransistor on two wafers shows a mean maximum forward current gain (βFmax) of 100 at 25 ºC. The phototransistor with the highest βFmax of 113 has been characterized from room temperature to 500 ºC. The βFmax drops to 51 at 400 ºC and remains the same at 500 ºC. The photo current gain of the phototransistor is 3.9 at 25 ºC and increases to 14 at 500 ºC under the 365 nm UV light with the optical power of 0.31 mW. The processing of the phototransistor is same to our 4HSiC-based bipolar integrated circuits, so it is a promising candidate for 4H-SiC opto-electronics onchip integration.

Processing techniques for 4H-SiC devices and circuits are optimized. The SiC mesa etching process has a variation of < 5% over the wafer. The average n-type contact resistivity is 1.15 × 10-6 Ohm.cm2. The fabricated devices and circuits with one-layer metal interconnect have high yield with no need of chemical-mechanical planarization process. More complex circuits with two-layer metal interconnect achieve high yield by applying chemical-mechanical planarization process. 

A Process Design Kit (PDK) has been developed to realize complex integrated circuits in Silicon Carbide (SiC) bipolar low-power technology. The PDK development process included basic device modeling, and design of gate library and parameterized cells. A transistor–transistor logic (TTL)-based PDK gate library design will also be discussed with delay, power, noise margin, and fan-out as main design criterion to tolerate the threshold voltage shift, beta (β) and collector current (I_C) variation of SiC devices as temperature increases. The PDK-based complex digital ICsdesign flow based on layout, physical verification, and in-house fabrication process will also be demonstrated. Both combinational and sequential circuits have been designed, such as a 720-device ALU and a 520-device 4 bit counter. All the integrated circuits and devices are fully characterized up to 500 °C. The inverter and a D-type flip-flop (DFF) are characterized as benchmark standard cells. The proposed work is a key step towards SiC-based very large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuits implementation for high-temperature applications.

Ring oscillators (ROs) are used to study the high-temperature characteristics of an in-house silicon carbide (SiC) technology. Design and successful operation of the in-house-fabricated 4H-SiC n-p-n bipolar transistors and TTL inverter-based 11-stage RO are reported from 25 degrees C to 600 degrees C. Non-monotonous temperature dependence was observed for the oscillator frequency; in the range of 25 degrees C to 300 degrees C, it increased with the temperature (1.33 MHz at 300 degrees C and V-CC = 15 V), while it decreased in the range of 300 degrees C-600 degrees C. The oscillator output frequency and delay were also characterized over a wide range of supply voltage (10 to 20 V). The noise margins of the TTL inverter were also measured; noise margin low (NML) decreases with the temperature, whereas noise margin high (NMH) increases with the temperature. The measured power-delay product (P-D . T-P) of the TTL inverter and 11-stage RO was approximate to 4.5 and approximate to 285 nJ, respectively, at V-CC= 15 V. Reliability testing indicated that the RO frequency of oscillation decreased 16% after HT characterization.

Most semiconductor devices require low-resistance ohmic contact to p-type doped regions. In this work, we present a semi-salicide process that forms low-resistance contacts (~10-4 Ω cm2) to epitaxially grown p-type (&gt;5×1018 cm-3) 4H-SiC at temperatures as low as 600 °C using rapid thermal processing (RTP). The first step is to self-align the nickel silicide (Ni2Si) at 600 °C. The second step is to deposit aluminium on top of the silicide, pattern it and then perform a second annealing step in the range 500 °C to 700 °C.