Investigation of the short-circuit performance of an IGBT

Author

Trivedi, Malay ; Shenai, Krishna

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Illinois Univ., Chicago, IL, USA

Volume

45

Issue

1

fYear

1998

fDate

1/1/1998 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

313

Lastpage

320

Abstract

This paper reports the internal dynamics of insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT´s) under short-circuit switching conditions. Short-circuit performance of IGBT´s has been studied in detail with the aid of extensive measurements and numerical simulations. An advanced two-dimensional (2-D) mixed device and circuit simulator that incorporates the self-heating mechanism has been employed to examine IGBT behavior under short-circuit stress. Latch-up free punchthrough IGBT has been examined. It is shown that hot-spot generation due to current crowding and impact ionization is the cause of breakdown of an IGBT under short-circuit switching

Keywords

impact ionisation; insulated gate bipolar transistors; semiconductor device models; short-circuit currents; IGBT; breakdown; current crowding; hot-spot generation; impact ionization; insulated gate bipolar transistor; internal dynamics; latch-up free punchthrough; numerical simulation; self-heating; short-circuit switching; two-dimensional mixed device/circuit simulator; Bipolar transistors; Circuit simulation; Circuit testing; Electric breakdown; Insulated gate bipolar transistors; Numerical simulation; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stress; Thyristors; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/16.658847

Filename

658847