Device development and pulse performance of super-12 Si SGTO

Summary form only given. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has conducted research on silicon super gate turn-off thyristors (SGTOs) for high action pulse switching required for survivability and lethality systems. The silicon SGTO designed by Silicon Power Corporation (SPCO) was evaluated to determine its stable, repeatable peak pulse current capability at wide and narrow pulse-widths. The Si SGTO design has a 3.5 cm² chip area with a 2.0 cm² mesa area and it is rated for 7 kV forward blocking and a continuous current rate over 100 A with adequate cooling. A ThinPak lid and high voltage silicone gel compound was used in packaging the SGTOs. The purpose of the ThinPak lid was to eliminate wire bonds and other parasitic elements such as stray inductance and bond resistance associated with conventional packaging. ThinPak technology improves device reliability by reducing thermal, electrical, and mechanical stress that the die is subjected to during high pulsing conditions. This work highlights the device optimization that SPCO has since made on the Si SGTO to improve the device pulsing performance. The latest Si SGTO evaluated has the same chip size and active area as the previous deeper emitter device presented in PPC 09. The enhancement of the emitter design, variation to the gate area, and improvements to the layout design enables the latest Si SGTO, termed "Super-12" to exhibit repeatable peak current of 7.0 kA at a 1 ms pulse width (a 20% increase compared to the deep emitter batch). The calculated action for the latest switches was 2.5 x 104 A2s at 7.0 kA. The narrow-pulse performance obtained for the Super 12 Si SGTO was a peak current pulse of 13 kA with a base pulse-width of 170μs, which corresponds to an action rate of 1.1 x 104 A2s and a dl/dt of 1.1 kA/μs. The full paper for this abstract will include specific details on the narrow and wide-pulse circuits used to evaluate the dynamic pulse capability of the Super- 12 in comparison to the deep emitter Si SGTO design. Implementing the Super-12 into future modules will further optimize the performance of pulsed power systems for army applications.