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by sonium 1743 days ago
Thank you for answering everything I ever wondered about SiC. Are there any other semiconductors that would be even better than SiC in all four points?
1 comments

Diamond is even better in terms of bandgap and thermal conductivity (one way jewelers verify a diamond is real is by checking to see if the gem has ridiculously high thermal conductivity). But diamond semiconductors are much too expensive ATM.

Gallium Nitride is the closest competitor to SiC now; it's better than SiC for high frequency applications but worse for high temperature applications and GaN is somewhat harder to manufacture. But that's changing rapidly.

https://www.arrow.com/en/research-and-events/articles/silico...

> But diamond semiconductors are much too expensive ATM.

It is also difficult to dope diamond n-type, as most of the donors are not shallow.

Interestingly: The conduction band in bulk diamond is above the vacuum level, meaning that conduction electrons "want" to fall out of the material. (Surface physics gets in the way.)