Silicon carbide is a high hardness material with high temperature resistance, corrosion resistance, high thermal conductivity and semiconductor properties. It is mainly used in these fields:
Abrasives and Cutting Tools
- Grinding and polishing: Silicon carbide can be used to make sandpaper, grinding wheels, abrasive pastes, and to process metals, ceramics, glass and other high hardness materials.
- Cutting tools: Cutting discs with SiC particles can be used for precision processing of semiconductor wafers, sapphire screens, etc.
- Sandblasting: SiC can be used as sandblasting media to clean metal surface oxides or coatings.
Refractory Materials and High Temperature Industry
- Metallurgical furnace lining: SiC is used in refractory bricks for steelmaking furnaces and aluminium electrolysis tanks to resist high-temperature molten metal erosion.
- Ceramic kiln furniture: made into kiln plates and supports to support ceramic products from deformation in high temperature sintering.
- Aerospace heat-resistant parts: SiC can be used for rocket nozzles, gas turbine blade coatings.
Electronic and Semiconductor Devices
- SiC MOSFET/Diode: Used in electric vehicle inverters, charging piles, with 10% higher efficiency than silicon-based devices and 50% volume reduction.
- Rail transport: high-speed rail traction converter, reducing energy consumption by 20%.
- RF devices: 5G base station power amplifiers (PAs) to support higher frequencies (millimetre wave) and lower signal loss.
- LED substrate: as a substrate material for blue LED, to improve luminous efficiency.
New Energy and Power Systems
- Photovoltaic inverters: SiC devices boost solar power conversion efficiency to over 99%.
- Smart Grid: Solid-state transformers in high-voltage DC transmission to reduce power transmission losses.
- Energy Storage System: Efficient charge/discharge control for battery management system.
Automotive Industry
- Main drive inverter: Increase range by 5-10%.
- On-board charger: shortens charging time and supports 800V high-voltage fast charging.
- Silicon Carbide brake pads: better than traditional materials in high temperature resistance, used in high-performance sports cars.
Military and Aerospace
- Armour materials: lightweight composite armour (e.g. bulletproof layer for tanks), 2.5 times harder than steel.
- Satellite components: radiation-resistant SiC substrates for space electronics.
