The Reverse Conducting IGBT has several benefits over a separate IGBT and diode solution and has the potential to become the dominant device within many power electronic applications; including, but not limited to, motor control, resonant converters, and switch mode power supplies. However, the device inherently suffers from many undesirable design trade-offs which have prevented its widespread use. One of the most critical issues is the snapback seen in the forward conduction characteristic which can prevent full turn-on of the device and result in the device becoming unsuitable for parallel operation (required in many high voltage modules). This phenomenon can be suppressed but at the expense of the reverse conduction performance. This paper provides an overview of the technical design challenges presented by the RC-IGBT structure and reviews alternative device concepts which have been proposed in literature. Analysis shows that these alternate concepts either present a trade-off in performance characteristics, an inability to be manufactured, or a requirement for a custom gate drive.
This letter presents the Dual Implant SuperJunction (SJ) trench Reverse-Conducting (RC) Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) concept with two implanted SJ pillars in the drift region; one from the cathode side and another from the anode side. The proposed device is compatible with current manufacturing processes and enables a full SJ structure to be achieved in a 1.2kV device as alignment between the pillars is not required. Extensive Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) simulations have been performed and demonstrated that utilising this dual implantation technique can result in a 77% reduction in turn-off losses for a full SJ structure, compared to a conventional RC-IGBT. The results show that any snapback in the on-state waveform significantly increases the turn-off losses and only a deep SJ device (pillar gap < 10μm) warrants the additional processing expense.
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