Schottky diodes are unipolar devices, i.e. they do not inject minority carriers into a neutral region, as do PN diodes. Since there is no minority charge storage, the turn-off event is fast, and the transient reverse current is small. As a result, the switching energy dissipated during turn-off is minimal. This becomes increasingly important in high frequency switching systems, where the total power loss can be dominated by switching losses. Schottky diodes virtually eliminate this switching loss.

Silicon Schottky diodes cannot be used in most high-voltage switching applications because their reverse leakage current is too large, leading to a large on-state power dissipation. The reason for this large reverse current is the relatively low barrier heights of most metals on silicon. In contrast, the wider bandgap of SiC allows higher metal-semiconductor barrier heights (up to 1.5 eV). Since reverse current decreases exponentially as barrier height is increased, a 0.5 eV increase in barrier height produces a large (factor of 10⁸) reduction in reverse current. In addition, the breakdown field of SiC is about 10x higher than silicon. This means that a diode of a given blocking voltage will have a specific on-resistance about 400x smaller in SiC than in silicon. All these factors make SiC Schottky diodes extremely attractive compared to silicon PiN diodes commonly used in electronic power switching circuits today.