by Holly Riddle
In April, Penn State announced the formation of the Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance (SCIA), “a coalition of industry leaders, academic institutions and government support with a focus on becoming the nation's central hub for research, development and workforce training in SiC crystal technology.”
The Alliance will be based out of the Penn State Material Research Institute and is just the latest example of the university’s dedication to excellence in materials research. That said, the Alliance isn’t just about research — it also will help fill a massive talent shortage, and bring industry opportunities to the Commonwealth. Furthermore, according to its director, the Alliance and the associated onsemi Silicon Carbide Crystal Center will be unlike anything else in the country, and like few other places in the world, and will include manufacturing processes that represent the most extreme environment on earth, heating graphite and SiC “sand” to temperatures that reach nearly half the temperature of the surface of the sun.
Here’s what you need to know.
Becoming the national centerpiece for silicon carbide material science
For the average layperson who doesn’t know their silicon from their silicon carbide (two materials that are vastly different, according to the Alliance’s industry liaison officer, David Fecko), Alliance director Joshua Robinson gave us the quick definition.
“Think of it as silicon on steroids,” he said. Silicon carbide is the material that will replace silicon in electric vehicles, electrical grid, and power electronics and, as silicon carbide is highly superior due to its efficiency, and it’s a material that will be necessary for the clean energy transition. In short, it’s the future.
In fact, you probably have similar technology on your desk or in your pocket right now. If you have a fast-charging cell phone charger, components in that system are made with similar silicon-on-steroids technology Similarly, if you’ve ever used a Tesla Supercharger, you’ve experienced the power of silicon carbide.
However, despite this superiority, efficiency and necessity, Robinson said that accessible U.S. research around silicon carbide crystal manufacturing had waned in recent history. So why was this the perfect time for Penn State to jump into a more or less abandoned area of academic research, focusing on manufacturing silicon carbide?
Robinson explained: “It comes down to funding. Research goes where the money is. In the 90s and early 2000s, there was a significant amount of government funding to develop this material for defense applications… Companies then took the knowledge from that government investment and started commercializing it, developing it for LEDs and high-powered devices.”
These companies focused on their own IP and silicon carbide remained an industry focus, rather than a research focus — and then the gray tsunami began. With more and more industry professionals retiring, and little research leading to workforce development and training, private industry realized it was coming upon a problem. Companies had worked hard to protect their IP, but now they had no trained workforce to work on that IP.
The goal is to advance workforce development, educate our students and upskill or re-skill incumbent workers, so that they can move from oil and gas or from other industries, into this industry that is poised to to continue to grow at greater than 20% annually, to more than $20 billion by 2030. We want to be the national centerpiece for silicon carbide material science and engineering.”
“Companies are struggling,” said Robinson. “There are companies that want to hire hundreds of people, and they just can’t find the workforce.” This is what brought a leading manufacturer, onsemi, to Penn State to establish the onsemi Silicon Carbide Crystal Center – a centerpiece of the Alliance.
Providing this workforce is one of the new Alliance’s aims, as it creates workforce development opportunities for all levels, from certificates and two-year degrees on up, which includes developing partnerships with leading workforce providers like the Pennsylvania College of Technology.
“If you look at the needs of the workforce, we are going to need four to five times the number of technicians than we are [individuals with] advanced degrees. These people running the tools, doing the measurements and collecting data — those are the ones we need a lot more of,” said Robinson.
Another one of the Alliance’s aims is to bring in new industry partners and expand existing industry partnerships, such as Penn State’s long-standing partnership with Morgan Advanced Materials, which is now a founding Alliance partner.
After achieving these goals, the overall result will impact not just Centre County, but the entire Commonwealth, and then the country.
Robinson summed up, “The goal is to advance workforce development, educate our students and upskill or re-skill incumbent workers, so that they can move from oil and gas or from other industries, into this industry that is poised to to continue to grow at greater than 20% annually, to more than $20 billion by 2030. We want to be the national centerpiece for silicon carbide material science and engineering.”
For now, the Alliance is renovating its facilities and prepping its curriculum to provide hands-on training, in anticipation of a more formal Q1 2025 kickoff, at which point it will begin research and training projects based on its industry members (industry members will be able to vote on the research projects the Alliance undertakes).
To learn more and contact the Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance, visit scia.psu.edu.
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