A history advancing innovative substrates from lab to fab

​CEA-Leti’s successful partnership with Soitec led to the company’s launch of a SiC plant in Bernin, France, in less than five years. Although these developments were kept confidential at the time, more recent advances were shared at ICSCRM 2023, the International Conference on Silicon Carbide and Related Materials, where more than 700 physicists, engineers, scientists, and students came to discuss SiC and other innovative materials. Of the four abstracts CEA-Leti submitted to ICSCRM 2023, two earned spots for oral presentations, and two for poster presentations, providing a panorama of the latest advances coming out of CEA-Leti labs.

Progress in SiC integration a key highlight at ICSCRM

​The four CEA-Leti presentations at ICSCRM illustrate significant strides in silicon carbide (SiC) integration for electronic and photonic applications, exploring the development of SiC-on-Insulator (SiCOI) structures using ion slicing technologies. These structures constitute a valuable tool to investigate the electrical properties of transferred SiC layers. A deeper understanding of the impacts of ion implantation and annealing processes will be vital to optimizing SiC-based device performance, and, further down the line, driving advances in applications where SiC plays a pivotal role, from power electronics to photonics and even quantum.

Building the future of SiC togetherBuilding the future of SiC together​

​The advances presented at ICSCRM were not pioneered by CEA-Leti alone; an entire ecosystem of partners has contributed to this groundbreaking research. In addition to Soitec (for power applications), CEA labs LIFT and LAPS worked closely with the CEA’s LITP lab (on test vehicles on the PFP platform), CEA-Irig (on high-temperature annealing), plus CEA experts in bonding, implantation, and thermal annealing. CEA-Leti also has a number of SiC partnerships with academic research labs and/or companies (such as the MobiSiC and Transform projects). Finally, CEA-Leti is working on photonic applications with C2N, a CNRS laboratory located in Paris-Saclay.

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Schematic view of the transferred SiC substrates developed at CEA-Leti. (a) SiCOI substrates for photonics and quantum; (b) vertically conductive SmartSiC™ substrates for power electronics.