Open AccessReview and analysis of SiC MOSFETs’ ruggedness and reliability
Author(s) -
Wang Jun,
Jiang Xi
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
iet power electronics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.637
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1755-4543
pISSN - 1755-4535
DOI - 10.1049/iet-pel.2019.0587
Subject(s) - reliability (semiconductor) , silicon carbide , materials science , stress (linguistics) , mosfet , transistor , degradation (telecommunications) , optoelectronics , power semiconductor device , gate oxide , engineering physics , electrical engineering , power (physics) , engineering , voltage , composite material , linguistics , physics , philosophy , quantum mechanics
SiC MOSFETs (silicon carbide metal‐oxide semiconductor field‐effect transistors) are replacing Si insulated gate bipolar transistors in many power conversion applications due to their superior performance. However, ruggedness and reliability of SiC MOSFETs are still big concern for their widespread applications in the market, especially in safety‐critical applications. The objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive picture on the ruggedness and reliability of commercial SiC MOSFETs, discover their failure or degradation mechanism, and propose some possible mitigation methods through both literature survey and in‐depth analysis. The ruggedness of SiC MOSFETs discussed here includes short‐circuit (SC) ruggedness, avalanche ruggedness, and their failure mechanism. The reliability issues include gate oxide reliability, degradation under high‐temperature bias stress, repetitive SC stress, avalanche stress, power cycling stress, body diode's surge current stress, and their degradation mechanism. Furthermore, this study discusses methods and solutions to improve their ruggedness and reliability.