| 1. |
- Ghandi, Reza, et al.
(författare)
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Influence of crystal orientation on the current gain in 4H-SiC BJTs
- 2010
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Ingår i: Device Research Conference - Conference Digest, DRC. - 9781424478705 ; , s. 131-132
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The 4H-SiC bipolar junction transistors (BJT) are considered as efficient high power switching devices due to the ability of obtaining very low specific on-resistance compared to FET based devices. However, one drawback with the present high voltage BJTs is the relatively low current gain. To reduce the power required by the drive circuit, it is important to increase the common-emitter current gain ( #x03B2;). 4H-SiC (0001) Si-face has become a favorable plane for vertical power BJTs with epitaxial layers that shows higher mobility along the c-axis and provides higher current gain. Furthermore, important progress on improving the current gain focused on the quality of surface passivation at the SiC/SiO2 interface has been reported during previous years. Higher quality of passivation can provide less interface traps and thereby minimizes the surface recombination current. Conventionally, vertical 4H-SiC BJTs are fabricated along the [11_00] direction on (0001) Si-face. However due to anisotropic properties of 4H-SiC, different orientations on Si-face can also affect the base current of the BJT through variation of mobility and interface traps density distribution along each direction. In this work, single-finger small area BJTs are fabricated on (0001) Si-face along [12_10], [011_0], [112_0] and [11_00] directions. This design can provide various orientations of BJTs that corresponds to an angular range between 0 to 180 degrees relative to conventional [11_00] direction. The goal was to find a correlation between different crystallographic orientation, mobility and interface traps density distribution through transistor characteristics and finally comparison with simulation. Fig.1 shows a cross section and top view of fabricated BJTs. The n+ emitter epi-layer is 1.35 #x03BC;m nitrogen doped to 6 #x00D7;1018 cm-3 and capped by 200-nm-thick 2 #x00D7;1019 cm-3 layer. The base epi-layer is 650 nm Al-d- - oped with concentration of 4.3 #x00D7;1017 cm-3. The drift n- epilayer is 20 #x03BC;m thick and doped to 6 #x00D7;1015 cm-3. Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching with an oxide mask was used to form emitter and base mesas. Fig.2 is a comparison of the maximum current gain with different orientations normalized to the maximum current gain along [11_00] before surface passivation and contact metallization. The results indicate that the maximum current gain is orientation-dependent and has a maximum for BJTs with the emitter edge aligned to the [112_0] direction. The variation effect of planar mobility and interface traps concentration on the current gain is simulated based on the previous work and is illustrated in Fig.3. The simulation shows that interface oxide charges has more influence on the current gain compared to the mobility and higher current gain is attributed to lower oxide interface charges. The orientation dependence of the transistor parameters such as maximum current gain after passivation and the base resistance will be evaluated and compared with simulation.
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| 2. |
- Ghandi, Reza, et al.
(författare)
-
Removal of Crystal Orientation Effects on the Current Gain of 4H-SiC BJTs Using Surface Passivation
- 2011
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Ingår i: IEEE Electron Device Letters. - : IEEE. - 0741-3106 .- 1558-0563. ; 32:5, s. 596-598
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this letter, the dependence of current gain and base resistance on crystal orientations for single-finger 4H-SiC bipolar junction transistors ( BJTs) is analyzed. Statistical evaluation techniques were also applied to study the effect of surface passivation and mobility on the performance of the devices. It is shown that BJTs with an emitter edge aligned to the [1 (2) under bar 10] direction shows a lower current gain before surface passivation and higher base resistance after contact formation compared with other investigated crystal directions. However, the devices show a similar current gain independent of the crystal orientation after surface passivation.
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| 3. |
- Östling, Mikael, et al.
(författare)
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SiC bipolar power transistors : Design and technology issues for ultimate performance
- 2010
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Ingår i: 2010 MRS Spring Meeting. - 9781605112237 ; , s. 175-186
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor devices for high power are becoming more mature and are now commercially available as discrete devices. Schottky diodes have been on the market since a few years but also bipolar junction transistors (BJTs), JFETs and MOSFETs are now reaching the market. The interest is rapidly growing for these devices in high power and high temperature applications. The BJTs have low conduction losses, fast switching capability, operate in normally-off mode, have high radiation hardness, and can handle high power density.This paper will review the current state of the art in active switching device performance with special emphasis on BJTs. Device performance has been demonstrated over a wide temperature interval. A very important feature in high power switch applications is the low on-resistance of a device. Better material quality and epi processes suppress the amount of basal plane dislocations to avoid stacking fault formation generated during high current injection. This has long been a concern for bipolar SiC devices but several research reports and long term reliability measurements of pn-junctions show that the bipolar degradation problem can be solved by a fine-tuned epitaxial technique. A discussion on surface passivation control is included. Finally, an example of a power switching module is given also demonstrating the excellent paralleling capability of BJTs.
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