Design and Characterization of a Data Converter in a SiC CMOS Technology for Harsh Environment Sensing Applications

This work presents the design and characterization of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with silicon carbide (SiC) for sensing applications in harsh environments. The SiC-based ADC is implemented with the state-of-the-art low-voltage SiC complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology developed by Fraunhofer IISB. Two types of ADCs, i.e., a 4-bit flash ADC and a 6-bit successive-approximation (SAR) ADC, are designed and simulated up to 300 degrees Celsius. The measurement results show that the 4-bit SiC flash ADC can operate reliably up to at least 200 degrees Celsius, which outperforms the Si counterpart regarding the maximum operating temperature.