High-temperature electrical behavior of spark–plasma–sintered B-doped SiC ceramics combining high resistivity and thermal conductivity

SiC has attracted extensive interest for semiconductor electronic devices, due to its wide bandgap and favorable physical properties. SiC ceramics with high resistivity and high thermal conductivity were fabricated by spark plasma sintering with B doping (0.5–3.0 wt.%) and Y 2 O 3 addition. B doping promoted grain growth from 0.57 to 1.48 μm and increased resistivity from 10 5 to 10 9 Ω·cm. The resistivity enhancement is attributed to the B–N compensation mechanism. B doping also enhances resistivity stability under high electric fields and increases the threshold field for the nonlinear-to-linear conduction transition from 2 to 20 V·mm -1 . The sample with 2.5 wt.% B exhibits a room-temperature resistivity of 1.1 × 10 9 Ω·cm, which remains higher than 10 4 Ω·cm at 873 K. The SiC ceramics retain high thermal conductivity (97.1–139.5 W·m -1 ·K -1 ) and exhibit a slower decrease to lower than 600 K compared with undoped SiC. These results support the use of SiC ceramics in semiconductor applications, such as integrated circuit packaging substrates and electrostatic chucks (ESCs)