A Review of Short Circuit Performance in 650 V Power Devices: SiC MOSFETs, Silicon Super-junction MOSFETs, SiC Cascode JFETs, Silicon MOSFETs and Silicon IGBTs

Conference: PCIM Europe 2022 - International Exhibition and Conference for Power Electronics, Intelligent Motion, Renewable Energy and Energy Management
05/10/2022 - 05/12/2022 at Nürnberg, Germany

doi:10.30420/565822162

Proceedings: PCIM Europe 2022

Pages: 8Language: englishTyp: PDF

Authors:
Bashar, Erfan; Agbo, Nereus; Wu, Ruizhu; Mendy, Simon; Ortiz Gonzalez, Jose; Alatise, Olayiwola (School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK)
Jahdi, Saeed (Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK)
Jennings, Michael (School of Electrical Engineering, Swansea University, Swansea, UK)
Withey, Andy; Evans, Sam; Davies, Gareth; Demitrova, Jana (Nexperia, Newport Wafer Fab, Newport, UK)

Abstract:
Using measurements, a comprehensive analysis is performed on the short circuit (SC) performance and robustness of 650V power devices including SiC MOSFETs, SiC Cascode JFETs, silicon Super-Junction, silicon IGBTs and silicon MOSFETs. The peak SC current, the SC energy density (in mJ/mm2) and the SC withstand time (SCWT) have been measured for all devices using a DC link voltage of 400 V at 25deg C, 75deg C and 150deg C. Results show that the SCWT increases with temperature in the silicon and super-junction MOSFETs, reduces with temperature in SiC MOSFETs and is temperature invariant in the SiC Cascode JFET. SiC devices have higher SC energy density than silicon devices, lower peak currents and are more temperature invariant. While the SiC MOSFETs fail in gate-source shorts with the source-drain still blocking voltage, the SiC Cascode JFET mostly fails in drain-source shorts with the gate still functional. All other devices (IGBT, super-junction MOSFET and silicon MOSFET) fail with both source-drain shorts and gate-source shorts. Only the SiC MOSFETs demonstrate increased gate leakage (indicated by reduced gate voltage) during the short circuit transient.