Overview of the forum “Silicon carbide (SiC) present and future applications in photonics, energy and quantum technology research and industry” that was held February 24-26, 2025 at the Oxford Scholar, 427 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Australia and chaired by Stefania Castelletto, RMIT.
The forum was in hybrid mode (in person and online) with speakers contributing with 36 presentations (13 of these were in person). Other participants from Australia were invited to attend and take part of the presentations. These included PhD students from RMIT and colleagues from the University of Melbourne working on themes related to quantum sensing using colour centres. An aim of the workshop was to grow a community that can push for new developments in Australia and also grow the international collaborations. The interest in the forum was built during 2024 by a series of online forums for SiC photonics community.
The speakers from Australia were from The University of Melbourne, The University of Sydney, The University of New South Whales, Griffith University, and Monash University.
International speakers from industry/research centres were from USA HRL Laboratories, JPL NASA, Quantum Materials and Applications Research Center (QUARC) National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology – QST (Japan) , NIST (USA), Argonne National Laboratory (USA), CNR-Institute of Micro-electronics and Microsystems (Italy), Alminica AB (Sweden), Fraunhofer-Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE (Germany), onsemi and start-up company SenSiC GmbH (Switzerland).
Other international speakers from academia were from the University of Stuttgart, ETH Zurich, Linköping University, Herriott Watt University, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, University of Science and Technology China, University of California Davis, Technical University of Denmark, Carnegie Mellon University. In addition, other international academic researchers attended to listen to the presentations and be part of discussions.
For each session there was extra time planned to have an open panel discussion to allow the exchange and creation of ideas for next steps and collaborations.
The strong momentum in research and development on SiC wafers and epilayers has propelled the creation of new valorisation pathways, covered by the Forum.
- Quantum technologies
- Integrated and Quantum Photonics
- Silicon carbide on insulator (SiCOI)
- Advances in microelectronics and classical sensors
- Material purity quantum grade
The forum shows that there is a growing network with some key national and international research centres, start-up companies and larger Industry (Bosch and onsemi) which are interested in these new valorisation pathways in SiCOI and integrated photonics. There can be synergies with other open areas of research in micro and nanoelectronics, material purity, and devices systems integration which can benefit from quantum technologies. Their developments can provide additional values to advance the quantum technologies to real implementation and integrated with systems and sensors. A joint challenge for these developments is the availability of silicon carbide material.
To have such synergies, the discussions at the forum outlined the need of cooperation in material supply to address the development of new applications and future progress from TRL 3 to 5 via involved industry and joint-grants projects in Europe, Australia and USA to have the global synergy.
In Australia, Griffith University Micro- and Nanotechnology centre has expanded the growth of SiC and joined the Queensland Quantum and Advanced Technologies Research Institute to work on quantum technologies in addition to power electronics. There is interest to combine efforts with RMIT Research centre on Applied Quantum Technologies. Synergies in Australia and international partners have been identified for future development of a SiC quantum platform as well other emerging materials processing via joint research applications. Interaction will feed ideas and discussions. There was initial discussion about exchange of researchers with some of the above laboratories as opportunity for PhD students and early career researchers.
A focus collection call for paper has been launched and can be found here
For more information and sharing suggestions for further community growth, as well as interest in presenting and participating at coming forum meetings, contact Stefania Castelletto.
