Status, prospects and commercialization of SiC power devices

Summary form only given. We have developed SiC Schottky diodes for blocking voltages ranging from 300 V to 1700 V covering a range of nominal currents from 4 A up to more than 25 A. Schottky diodes for blocking 300 V with nominal current ratings of 6 A and 10 A respectively, and for blocking 600 V with nominal current rating of 4 A and 6 A respectively, have already been commercialized by the parent Company Infineon Technologies AG; Schottky diodes for blocking 1200 V will follow soon. For higher blocking voltages up to 3 kV merged diodes were also successfully developed. We have also performed R&D on n-channel enhancement SiC MOSFETs. However, despite the promising performance ( 1800 V, 46 m/spl Omega/cm/sup 2/ e.g.) SiC MOSFET´s are still far away from commercialization due to the lack of long term stability and an on-resistance sufficiently low enough to compete with their silicon enemies. As a rugged and very promising alternative to the SiC MOSFET we have developed vertical junction field effect transistors (VJFETs).