Experimental investigation of Si IGBT short circuit capability at 200°C

This paper investigates the short-circuit capability and the failure mechanisms of Si trench gate field-stop IGBT under high temperature operation conditions through experiments. First, the test circuits are proposed for IGBT short circuit capability evaluation in different types of short circuit conditions. A hardware setup is built accordingly, and used to evaluate experimentally the IGBT short circuit failures caused by thermal destruction, thermal runaway and latch-up at both 25°C and 200°C. The critical short circuit time is given for high temperature operation under different short circuit conditions. The experimental results show that although the critical short circuit time is reduced at 200°C operation, it is still adequate for the protection circuit to shut down the devices safely. The Si trench gate field-stop IGBT exhibits good short circuit ruggedness at 200°C operation.