Evaluation of the Safe Operating Area of A 2.0 CM2, 4 KV Si SGTO

The U. S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) has been evaluating high voltage, high current modular silicon Super-gate turn-off thyristors (SGTOs) developed by Silicon Power Corporation (SPCO) for ARL. SGTOs were characterized at the individual chip level in order to help understand the capabilities of any scaled up device packages. SGTOs were individually pulsed in two separate test beds: one designed to produce narrow current pulses, and another designed for wider pulses reaching 1 ms. Peak current, rise time and action (I²t) limitations were evaluated across this spectrum of pulse widths to document the Safe Operating Area (SOA) of the Si SGTOs. The peak current attained at a 1.9 μs FWHM pulse width was 20 kA with a 10–90% rate-ofcurrent rise of 26 kA/μs. In the wider pulse circuit, single die were switched as high as 6.2 kA with an action value of 18 × 10³ A²s. Waveforms for various SGTOs were analyzed, and a set of SOA curves was created to represent characterization of the SGTO die. An exploration to minimize recovery time (Tq) is also included, with Tq time reduced to 10 μs following a 1- ms wide, 5 kA pulse.