UIS failure mechanism of SiC power MOSFETs

Fayyaz, Asad; Castellazzi, Alberto; Romano, Gianpaolo; Riccio, Michele; Urresti, J.; Wright, Nick

Abstract

This paper investigates the failure mechanism of SiC power MOSFETs during avalanche breakdown under unclamped inductive switching (UIS) test regime. Switches deployed within motor drive applications could experience undesired avalanche breakdown events. Therefore, avalanche ruggedness is an important feature of power devices enabling snubber-less converter design and is also a desired feature in certain applications such as automotive. It is essential to thoroughly characterize SiC power MOSFETs for better understanding of their robustness and more importantly of their corresponding underling physical mechanisms responsible for failure in order to inform device design and technology evolution. Experimental results during UIS at failure and 2D TCAD simulation results are presented in this study.

Citation

Fayyaz, A., Castellazzi, A., Romano, G., Riccio, M., Urresti, J., & Wright, N. (2016). UIS failure mechanism of SiC power MOSFETs.

• Conference Name: 4th IEEE Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications (WiPDA 2016)
• End Date: Nov 9, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Sep 12, 2016
• Publication Date: Dec 29, 2016
• Deposit Date: Mar 31, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 31, 2017
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: Silicon carbide; MOSFET; Avalanche breakdown; Avalanche ruggedness; Unclamped inductive switching
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/831855
• Publisher URL: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7799921/
• Related Public URLs: http://www.wipda2016.org/
• Additional Information: doi:10.1109/WiPDA.2016.7799921. © 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.
• Contract Date: Mar 31, 2017