Characterization and prediction of the avalanche performance of 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs

This paper reports the avalanche capabilities of commercial 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs. Various non-repetitive avalanche conditions, such as current, energy, and time in avalanche, were tested in order to fully evaluate the ruggedness of the SiC MOSFETs. From this testing, a boundary was drawn to identify the typical avalanche ruggedness of each device. It was shown that, unlike similarly-rated Si CoolMOS devices, the SiC MOSFETs could withstand avalanche currents that are more than twice that of their rated current. It was also determined that the avalanche boundary is scalable to the entire family of Cree´s 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs by the device active area. This is a noteworthy characteristic of the Cree SiC MOSFETs, as it indicates consistent behavior among the different devices.