Undoped SiC crystals grown by physical vapor transport have been characterized by temperature dependent Hall effect and near infrared optical absorption measurements. Crystals with reduced nitrogen content were found to exhibitp‐type conductivity with carrier concentrations in the 5×1014–1×1016cm−3range at room temperature. The Fermi level position determined from Hall effect measurements at elevated temperatures was 0.35 eV above valence band. The primary acceptor‐type impurity was identified as substitutional boron with total concentration of uncompensated acceptors in the 1×1017–5×1018range. This interpretation was confirmed by near infrared absorption spectra, which were dominated by a broad photoionization band with a threshold at 0.7 eV and a maximum at 1.75 eV. The shape of the band was fitted, and the thermal ionization energy of the defect was found to be in the 0.3–0.4 eV range. A correlation between the photoionization band intensity, and the uncompensated boron content was used to determine the value of maximum optical cross section of boron photoionization band, which was 4.17×10−17cm2. In addition to photoionization band, boron‐containing samples exhibited set of narrow absorption lines near the fundamental absorption edge. Based on correlation with boron content and line position in different SiC polytypes, these lines were identified as due to excitons bound to neutral boron acceptors. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.