Demonstration of the Short-circuit Ruggedness of a 10 kV Silicon Carbide Bipolar Junction Transistor

TLDR: In this paper, the static, switching and short-circuit characterization of a 10 kV-class Silicon Carbide (SiC) Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) is reported.

Abstract: Static, switching and short-circuit characterization of a 10 kV-class Silicon Carbide (SiC) Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) is reported. The 2.4 mm2 SiC BJT show good static and switching behavior. The current gain is low compared to literature, but several issues have been identified and can be improved. For the first time, the Short-circuit ruggedness of a 10 kV SiC-BJT is reported. These tests show outstanding performance with at least 16 µs withstand time. Several samples have been brought to failure and revealed an outstanding 52.1 J/cm2 of short-circuit critical energy at 32% of breakdown voltage. The failure seems to happen on the top face metallization since the devices failed in blocked mode and the base-emitter terminals shorted. The SiC BJT handles without failing at least 3 times the critical Short-circuit energy of the commercial SiC MOSFETs. In addition, switching performance is much better than that of Si-IGBTs.