Thermal damage in SiC Schottky diodes induced by SE heavy ions

The failure of SiC Schottky diodes due to the impact of high energy heavy ions is investigated by means of electro-thermal and thermal finite element simulations. In particular, 3D ATLAS simulation of a small portion of the diode structure is used for computing the dissipated power density, which is subsequently used as input for the thermal COMSOL simulation of the complete system including chip and packaging. Results show that, as a consequence of the ion penetrating through the device, the temperature at the Schottky barrier becomes bigger than the SiC melting point for a time large enough to cause permanent damages to the SiC lattice. Simulation results are in good agreement with experiments presented in the literature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.