4.8 Article

A 4H-SiC MOSFET-Based ESD Protection With Improved Snapback Characteristics for High-Voltage Applications

Journal

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS
Volume 36, Issue 5, Pages 4921-4926

Publisher

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2020.3032917

Keywords

Electrostatic discharges; Logic gates; Electric variables; Silicon; Silicon carbide; Junctions; Implants; 4H-SiC; electrostatic discharge (ESD); gate-grounded n-type metal-oxide-semiconductor (GGNMOS); high-voltage application; reliability; silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR); silicon carbide (SiC); snapback

Funding

  1. Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology - Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy [20009213]
  2. Ministry of Science and ICT, Korea, under the Information Technology Research Center Support Program [IITP-2019-2018-0-01421]
  3. Ministry of Trade
  4. Korea Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology (KEIT) [20009213] Funding Source: Korea Institute of Science & Technology Information (KISTI), National Science & Technology Information Service (NTIS)

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A novel ESD protection device based on 4H-SiC material was proposed and investigated, showing improved critical electric field, triggering characteristics, and holding voltage compared to traditional silicon-based devices. Experimental results demonstrated good electrical characteristics and stability of the proposed device.
A novel electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection device based on an n-type metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (NMOSFET) with segmented topology was proposed and investigated, considering the material characteristics of 4H-SiC, which is a wide-bandgap material (3.3 eV). ESD phenomena are important in terms of semiconductor reliability, and the benefits of using 4H-SiC as a material can provide robustness and excellent thermal reliability to ESD protection devices. The proposed device improves the wide range of snapback phenomena caused by the high critical electric field (2.4 MV/cm), in comparison to using Si (0.25 MV/cm); it also improves triggering characteristics and provides a high holding voltage. The proposed device and a traditional silicon-controlled rectifier, a gate-grounded-NMOS, and a gate-body floating NMOS were fabricated using the 4H-SiC process. The electrical characteristics of the experimental devices, determined by a transmission-line-pulsing system, were comparatively analyzed. Additionally, this article presents the analysis of the optimization of electrical characteristics according to the critical design variables of the proposed device, stacking for high-voltage applications, and reliability test results for high temperatures (300-500 K).

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