Local non invasive study of SiC diodes with abnormal electrical behavior

In this work, Silicon Carbide Schottky Barrier Diodes (SBDs) were inspected by Infrared Lock-In Thermography to study and determine the origin of structural weak spots resulting from their manufacturing and electro-thermal stressing tests. These spots are frequency modulated following three different approaches representative of the SBDs operating regimes and detected by their infrared emission, as they behave as hot spots. According to thermal results, such weak spots have originated from barrier modification due to the wire-bonding process, non-uniform active area resistance due to bad metallization electrical contact, deep level traps creation due to high energy implantation in the edge termination, and internal propagation of lattice defects during thermal cycling. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.