Failure mechanisms of SOI high-voltage LIGBTs and LDMOSes under unclamped inductive switching

Author

Garner, D.M. ; Udrea, E. ; Ensell, G. ; Sheng, K. ; Popescu, A.E. ; Amaratunga, G.A.J. ; Milne, W.I.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Eng., Cambridge Univ., UK

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

335

Lastpage

338

Abstract

This paper examines the behaviour of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) LIGBTs and LDMOSes under unclamped inductive switching (UIS). Surprisingly, it is found that LIGBTs can absorb much less UIS current than LDMOSes, specifically only between one-half and one-third. Two-dimensional device simulation showed that this was because hole injection from the LIGBT anode during turn-off changed the potential distribution within the device, leading to field concentration beneath the gate and hence premature failure of the gate. This has an important impact on the choice of a power device in a power integrated circuit, and its design

Keywords

failure analysis; insulated gate bipolar transistors; power MOSFET; power semiconductor switches; silicon-on-insulator; LDMOS; LIGBT; SOI high-voltage transistor; failure mechanism; hole injection; potential distribution; power device; power integrated circuit; two-dimensional device simulation; unclamped inductive switching; Anodes; Breakdown voltage; Computational modeling; Computer science; Failure analysis; Integrated circuit manufacture; Magnetic switching; Power integrated circuits; Robustness; Silicon on insulator technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs, 2001. ISPSD '01. Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Osaka

ISSN

1063-6854

Print_ISBN

4-88686-056-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISPSD.2001.934623

Filename

934623