Silicon carbide (SiC) is a wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor material, and its preparation process has strict requirements on the purity of raw materials. A self-developed medium-frequency induction heating furnace was used to carry out powder heat treatment and purification experiments on SiC powder to improve the purity of the powder. Samples with 3.5N purity were analyzed using XRD and GDMS characterization methods. It was found that under conditions of high-temperature (2200 °C) and long-time (50 h) processing, the impurity removal effect was quite good, but the powder loss was as high as 53.42%. The powder loss during the low-temperature (less than 2050 °C) and short-time process was less than 1.5%, but the purification effect was not substantial. After a prolonged processing time, the purification effect of low-temperature heat treatment conditions was improved, but the powder loss was also increased to 30%. In contrast, segmented purification processing at a low temperature in the early stage and a high temperature in the later stage achieved a good purification effect. On the premise of maintaining the utilization rate of raw materials, a 5N-purity SiC source was successfully prepared. The test results show that the contents of free Si, free C and free oxygen impurities were reduced to less than 0.01%, and the contents of Al, B, Fe, Mg, Na, Ti and other impurities were less than 1.15 ppm, which is close to the ppb level.
Keywords: powder heat treatment; powder purification; silicon carbide.