Face to Face: Crystal-growth method bodes electric payoff

Like a runner with an Olympian’s strength but flawed technique, the rugged semiconductor silicon carbide has crystal defects that have kept it from being crowned as a champ among electrical materials. Even so, the compound dominates a niche of transistors and other electrical components that operate at high power, temperature, and frequency.

Now, Daisuke Nakamura and his colleagues at Toyota Central R&D Laboratories in Nagakute, Japan, have grown silicon-carbide crystals by a new process that reduces those defects to negligible levels.