High-Temperature Integrated Circuit Technologies in Silicon Carbide

Silicon carbide is a wide bandgap semiconductor whose intrinsic properties—thermal conductivity, chemical inertness and high breakdown field—render it uniquely suited to integrated circuits destined for extreme environments. Over the past decade, developments in device fabrication and circuit design have demonstrated digital and analogue functions at temperatures above 300 °C, with some platforms extending operation to 500 °C and beyond. Key advances include the integration of junction field effect transistors into ring oscillators for timing applications, the creation of complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) logic gates free from ion implantation, and the realisation of mixed‐signal building blocks such as flash analog-to-digital converters. These technologies have enabled compact power regulators, temperature and magnetic-field sensors, and imaging arrays that support deep-drilling electronics, aerospace systems and long-duration planetary landers without bulky cooling. The continued refinement of process design kits and device models is further accelerating the deployment of very large scale integration in harsh and high-reliability sectors.

Research from Nature Portfolio

No recent Nature Portfolio content available.

High-Temperature Integrated Circuit Technologies in Silicon Carbide publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in high-temperature integrated circuit technologies in silicon carbide across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Silicon Carbide (SiC): A wide bandgap semiconductor material noted for high thermal conductivity, chemical stability and large electric field tolerance.

Wide Bandgap Semiconductor: A class of materials whose larger energy gap allows device operation at elevated temperatures and voltages compared with silicon.

Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET): A unipolar transistor in which current is regulated by a voltage applied to a semiconductor p–n junction.

Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor (CMOS): A transistor technology pairing n- and p-channel MOSFETs to implement low-power digital logic.

Ring Oscillator: A circuit of odd-numbered inverters connected in series, used for timing, process monitoring and reliability testing.

Process Design Kit (PDK): A set of models, libraries and design rules enabling circuit designers to implement complex ICs in a specific semiconductor technology.

Flash Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC): A high-speed digitiser that compares an input voltage simultaneously against a ladder of reference voltages to produce digital output.

References

1. Prolonged silicon carbide integrated circuit operation in Venus surface atmospheric conditions. AIP Advances (2016).
2. Towards Silicon Carbide VLSI Circuits for Extreme Environment Applications. Electronics (2019).
3. An analog to digital converter in a SiC CMOS technology for high-temperature applications. Applied Physics Letters (2024).