Integrated avalanche diode for 600 V Trench IGBT over-voltage protection

Author

Hsieh, Alice Pei-Shan ; Udrea, Florin ; Lin, Wei-Chieh

Author_Institution

Dept. of Eng., Univ. of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

Volume

2

fYear

2011

fDate

17-19 Oct. 2011

Firstpage

309

Lastpage

312

Abstract

Avalanche multiplication has been one of the major destructive failure mechanisms in IGBTs; in order to avoid operating an IGBT under abnormal conditions, it is desirable to develop peripheral protecting circuits monolithically integrated without compromising the operation and performance of the IGBT. In this paper, a monolithically integrated avalanche diode (D_av) for 600V Trench IGBT over-voltage protection is proposed. The mix-mode transient simulation proves the clamping capability of the D_av when the IGBT is experiencing over-voltage stress in unclamped inductive switching (UIS) test. The spread of avalanche energy, which prevents hot-spot formation, through the help of the avalanche diode feeding back a large fraction of the avalanche current to a gate resistance (R_G) is also explained.

Keywords

avalanche diodes; insulated gate bipolar transistors; overvoltage protection; avalanche current; avalanche energy; avalanche multiplication; gate resistance; hot-spot formation; mix-mode transient simulation; monolithically integrated avalanche diode; peripheral protecting circuits; trench IGBT over-voltage protection; unclamped inductive switching test; voltage 600 V; Ice; Insulated gate bipolar transistors; Junctions; Logic gates; Semiconductor diodes; Switches; Transient analysis; IGBT; avalanche diode; unclamped inductive switching (UIS);

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Semiconductor Conference (CAS), 2011 International

Conference_Location

Sinaia

ISSN

1545-827X

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-173-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/SMICND.2011.6095801

Filename

6095801