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Silicon carbide (SiC) or moissanite is a ceramic compound of silicon and carbon.
Most SiC is man-made for use as an abrasive (when it is often known by the trade name carborundum), or more recently as a semiconductor and moissanite gemstones. The simplest manufacturing process is to combine sand and carbon at a high temperature, between 1600°C and 2500°C. Purer product can be made by the more expensive process of chemical vapor deposition. Its high melting point (above 1600°C) makes it useful for bearings and furnace parts. It is also highly inert. There is currently much interest in its use in electronics, where its high thermal conductivity, high electric field breakdown strength and high maximum current density make it more promising than silicon for high-powered devices.
Use as semiconductor
SiC is used for blue LEDs, ultrafast Schottky diodeThe Schottky diode (named after German physicist Walter H. Schottky) is a semiconductor diode with a low forward voltage drop. A typical application is discharge-protection for solar cells connected to lead-acid batteries. While standard silicon diodes has and MESFETsThe Field-Effect Transistor (FET) is a family of transistors that rely on an electric field to control the conductivity of a "channel" in a semiconductor material. FETs, like all transistors, can be thought of as voltage-controlled resistors. Most FETs ar. Due to its high thermal conductivity, SiC
is also used as substrate for other semiconductor materials.
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Semiconductors
Superhard materialsFor many decades, engineers, scientists, and corporatiosn have seeked materials as hard as or harder than Diamonds in order to machine equipment along with create new matieral that is more attainable with similar phyiscal properties in order to create par
