The thermal oxidation of SiC in an afterglow processing system opens new pathways to address oxide growth rate and quality issues. In this vacuum furnace process, neutral atomic and excited molecular species are generated in a clean microwave plasma source and then flow to the furnace region of the apparatus where they react with the SiC substrates at a prescribed temperature. With the afterglow method oxide films nearly 700Angstrom thick have been grown at 1100degreesC in one hour at 1 Torr, a rate three times greater than we observe at the same temperature in our conventional steam process. Therefore, the reactivity of the afterglow species with SiC appears orders of magnitude higher than that of steam reacting at atmosphere. The electrical proper-ties of films grown by the afterglow and conventional methods were characterized using the state-of-the-art non-contact corona-metrology commonly used by silicon IC manufacturers. As compared to furnace growth, the afterglow method was found to produce films with superior effective dielectric constant and similar interface trap density.