Turn-off failures in individual and paralleled MCT´s

Author

Afridi, Khurram K. ; Kassakian, John G.

Author_Institution

Lab. for Electromagn. & Electron. Syst., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

Volume

11

Issue

2

fYear

1996

fDate

3/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

299

Lastpage

303

Abstract

A turn-off failure mode in individual MOS-controlled thyristors (MCTs), initiated by a long gate voltage rise-time, is identified and analyzed. It is shown to be caused by turn-off current crowding in the MCT. In addition, a differential failure mode in paralleled devices is demonstrated in which the slower of the two MCTs fails to turn off. This is caused by the increase in anode current through the slower device and the decrease in gate voltage rise-time due to the MCTs Miller capacitance

Keywords

MIS devices; MOS-controlled thyristors; failure analysis; reliability theory; semiconductor device models; semiconductor device reliability; thyristors; MCT; MOS-controlled thyristors; Miller capacitance; anode current; differential failure mode; gate voltage rise-time; reliability modelling; turn-off current crowding; turn-off failure mode; Anodes; Capacitance; Commercialization; Failure analysis; Insulated gate bipolar transistors; MOSFET circuits; Power semiconductor switches; Proximity effect; Thyristors; Voltage control;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0885-8993

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/63.486179

Filename

486179