ABSTRACT

The important applications and useful benefits of extreme environment electronics are described throughout Parts I and XI of this book. For the majority of such applications, the operating requirements (in terms of power density, temperature, radiation, or other relevant extreme environment performance specifications) are not sufficiently extreme so as to exclude the use of silicon, silicon-on-insulator (SOI), SiGe, or other technology approaches. For those more extreme application environments beyond the inherent physical limitations of aforementioned established technologies covered elsewhere in this book, silicon carbide (SiC) has long been recognized as one of the prime candidates for providing desired semiconductor electronics functionality. This chapter briefly reviews SiC electronic technology platforms for use in high-temperature environments.