The forum “Silicon carbide (SiC) present and future applications in photonics, energy and quantum technology research and industry” was held February 24-26, 2025 in Melbourne, Australia. It was initiated and chaired by Stefania Castelletto, RMIT. The purpose was to align researchers in Australia and internationally to facilitate new collaborations towards new technologies using silicon carbide. The interest in the forum was built during 2024 by a series of online forums using the IW-SiC platform that was established as part of the EU FET Open project SiComb on frequency comb and involved partners ALM, FAU and DTU which now contribute in rePowerSiC.

Alminica presented a talk on “Facilitating growth to devices in emerging technologies by business concepts in manufacturing”. That is an activity as part of transfer of knowledge to create more utilisation from high risk and high reward research projects. The rePowerSiC project was presented as case and the potential of creating epiwafers as digital assets was introduced as way to create post project funding and exploitation. 

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 listen to the presentations. 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. 

The forum shows that there is a growing network with some key national and international research centres, start-up companies and larger Industry which are interested in these new valorisation pathways in new technologies based on SiC. A joint challenge for these developments is the availability of silicon carbide material.