Assessing the pre-breakdown carriers' multiplication in SiC power MOSFETs by soft gamma radiation and its correlation to the Terrestrial Cosmic Rays failure rate data as measured by neutron irradiation

A Novel Non-Invasive Cryostatic Spectrometry Technique to Characterize the Carriers’ Multiplication Factor in Silicon Carbide Power Devices

“…Technologies and Application of Engineering Materials scaling behavior as a function of the normalized reverse bias voltage VBIAS / VBD. Recent works [12], [13], have demonstrated the correlation between the TCR failure rate of power devices assessed by neutron irradiation and the multiplication factor measured by soft-gamma irradiation at ambient temperature. Although the latter technique has proven to be very promising, its application at room temperature was limited to those devices with a low level of reverse current.…”

“…Recently, the irradiation of power devices with radioactive sources has been proposed as a technique to characterize the internal electric field of SiC components through the measurement of carriers' multiplication [9]- [11]. Special focus has been devoted to a non-invasive technique that makes use of Am 241 as a soft-gamma radiation source [12], [13]. By exposing devices biased in the blocking state to the soft-gamma source, the technique has proven to be effective provided that the reverse current in the device under test (DUT) is much lower than the peak of the ionization current generated by a single absorbed photon.…”