# History of SiC

| In contrast to diamonds, SiC is never found on this world (and thus never became a valued gemstone in the past). Only in fragments of other worlds (i.e. meteorites), on occasion contain SiC as has been found by Moissan in 1905. Mineralogists thus call "natural" SiC " Moissanite".
|  | It was Berzellius , who in 1824 first observed (man-made) SiC. But it was not before the invention of the electric furnace by E.H. and A.H. Cowles , and its application to carbon compounds by Acheson around 1885, that SiC came into focus as a useful material.
|  | Acheson was actually looking for a material that could replace expensive diamonds needed for cutting and polishing purposes. " Carborundum ", the fine-crystalline SiC stuff, made it big and is still much used today. The name was a take off on "Corundum", the mineralogists name for Aluminumoxid, Al2O3.
| In the "Acheson reactor" on occasion relatively large single crystals could be found in voids and channels formed during processing.
|  | Checking such a crystal for possible uses as a "crystal" in the early "crystal detector radios", H.J. Round noticed (and described in a paper) that cold light was emitted from the SiC - metal point-contact structure. This was the very first description of a LED! Of course, Round did not, and could not understand what he saw.
|  | In 1912 H. Baumhauer discovered the polytypie of SiC - not a mean feat at this date!
| In 1955, Lely made the next big step in inventing the "Lely growth method" which is still used nowadays to some extent. This really triggered the use of SiC as an electronic material.
| Let's just look at some of the more interesting dates in the development of SiC as an electronic material:
|  | 1958 First SiC conference in Boston 1966 First MOS transistor (H.R. Phillip, E.A. Taft) 1977 Development of the modified Lely growth technique by Yu.M. Tairov; producing first commercially interesting single SiC crystals. 1977 First commercial LED based on SiC from V.F. Tsvetkov at Siemens (not a big success, quote from the Net: "The first original commercially successful blue (SiC) LEDs (were) pioneered by Cree in the early 1990's. I have been advised that Siemens dabbled into the blue LED game as far back as the 1970's and produced working models, but my impression from seeing commercially successful products is that Cree is the first significantly commercially successful producer") 1978 First bipolar transistor (W. von Münch) 1983 Heteroepitaxie of SiC on Si (S. Nishino, J.A. Powell, H.A. Will) 1987 Cree Research Inc., the first commercial supplier of SiC substrates, was founded 1989 1 inch SiC single crystals 1993 2 inch SiC single crystals 1994 3 inch SiC single crystals 1999 4 inch SiC single crystals

With frame

10.1.1 Silicon Carbide - Material Aspects

SiC Crystal Growth and Defects

© H. Föll (Semiconductors - Script)