Study on increasing the surge capability of a lightning surge protection, semiconductor device

Design techniques for increasing the surge capability of a bidirectional two-terminal lightning surge protection thyristor for communications equipment are described. The relationships between surge capability and doping profiles with different p-base widths and n-base impurity concentrations are studied by analyzing failure modes and surge response characteristics. A narrow p-base width is found to be effective for increasing surge capability because it can reduce turn-on energy dissipation that leads to hot-spot failure. Furthermore, reducing the on-state energy dissipation can increase surge capability without increasing device size.