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INTRODUCTION
Silicon carbide devices are well known for their
potential to provide an impact on the development of
new and refined solutions for high voltage and high
power switching. Applications can be found in
traction or energy distribution systems like HVDC
e.g. However, large area SIC devices suited for such
high power application (in the range above 100kVA)
are not profitable at the moment due to a although
considerably improved but still not sufficient
substrate quality. In addition, the technology of high
voltage bipolar S i c switches capable of blocking
more than 6,5kV is still at the very beginning.
Challenges are especially a stable and economical
epitaxial growth technology as well as a smart
minority carrier lifetime management in thick
epitaxial layers. In order to vary this lifetime first of
all it is necessary to demonstrate a sufficient high
value (fairly above Ips !) as a reasonable starting
point. Stable and reproducible methods to achieve
such high minority carrier lifetimes in S i c are still
under investigation. Thus, as an intermediate step on
the way to introduce bipolar S i c in high power
electronics, it is worth to evaluate the potential of
well developed unipolar SIC switching devices for
such applications.
UNIPOLAR DEVICE APPROACH
The most mature type of S i c power switching devices
is the vertical junction field effect transistor (VJFET).
........... ....... ..
1
2
~.
Voltage (kV)
Figure I : Blocking behavior of a 4kV VJFET in
cascode configuration
As the drift layer for this device, we used a low
doped epitaxial layer (1,5 .. 2 ~ 1 0 ' ~ c mwith
~ ~ )a
thickness of about 35pm. The controlling head region
of the VJFET was designed identically to the low
voltage configurations [ 6 ] . The conduction behavior
in both directions is shown in figure 2 for a device
with an active area of 1,3mm2 (single VJFET).
Saturation as well as the operation of the reverse
diode can be observed.
Recently, a smart approach of in series connected
VJFETs based on the well known cascode was
introduced. A first version with 4,5kV blocking
voltage and an on-resistance of 1,2 Q was presented
i n 2002 141. The results indicated an interesting
139
u09-7876-8/03/$17.000 2003 IEEE
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3000V
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3000V
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D1
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Gate
M1
VGS= 0 ... -28V, 4V/Step
Source
a3
E
g'
Voltage (kV)
140
Time @SI
1400
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(P)
0.4
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0.5
141
1200
1000
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600
400
200
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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142