Internal dynamics of IGBT during short circuit switching

Author

Trivedi, Malay ; Shenai, Krishna

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Wisconsin Univ., Madison, WI, USA

fYear

1996

fDate

29 Sep-1 Oct 1996

Firstpage

77

Lastpage

80

Abstract

This paper reports the internal dynamics of IGBT under short circuit switching conditions. Short circuit performance of IGBTs has been studied in detail with the aid of extensive measurements and numerical simulations. An advanced two-dimensional mixed device and circuit simulator has been employed to examine IGBT behaviour under short circuit stress. The self-heating mechanism is incorporated by self-consistently solving heat generation and diffusion equations with semiconductor charge balance and transport equations. A latch-up free punch-through IGBT has been examined. It is shown that hot-spot generation due to current crowding and impact ionization are the causes of breakdown of an IGBT under short circuit switching. Use of a wider gate is likely to improve the ruggedness of the device

Keywords

electric breakdown; failure analysis; impact ionisation; insulated gate bipolar transistors; power transistors; semiconductor device models; semiconductor device reliability; short-circuit currents; temperature distribution; thermal analysis; 2D mixed device/circuit simulator; IGBT; breakdown; current crowding; heat diffusion equation; heat generation equations; hot-spot generation; impact ionization; internal dynamics; latch-up free punch-through device; self-heating mechanism; semiconductor charge balance equation; semiconductor transport equations; short circuit switching; Circuit optimization; Circuit simulation; Electric breakdown; Equations; Impact ionization; Insulated gate bipolar transistors; Numerical simulation; Proximity effect; Stress; Switching circuits;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Bipolar/BiCMOS Circuits and Technology Meeting, 1996., Proceedings of the 1996

Conference_Location

Minneapolis, MN

ISSN

1088-9299

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3516-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/BIPOL.1996.554144

Filename

554144