Numerical analysis of turn-off characteristics for a gate turn-off thyristor with a shorted anode emitter

Shimizu, Y.; Naito, Makio; Odamura, Motomi; Terasawa, Y.

doi:10.1109/t-ed.1981.20482

Cited by 15 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 8 publications

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“…The anode-shorted structure has been successfully proposed in Si thyristors to decrease the turn-off time and the turn-off loss induced by long carrier lifetime of Si material (i.e. tens of μs or even several ms) [28][29][30][31]. Even though SiC thyristors never suffer from long carrier lifetime (∼μs), this structure may also bring similar benefit for SiC thyristors and furthur reduce the total power loss from device level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation on 4H-SiC gate turn-off thyristor with direct carrier extraction access to drift region for power conversion applications

Liang

Wang

Fang

et al. 2020

Semicond. Sci. Technol.

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4H-SiC gate turn-off (GTO) thyristor offers extraordinary advantages over its counterparts in handling ultra-high voltage electric power conversion applications because of its relatively low forward voltage drop at high conduction current density. Besides, though the SiC thyristors never suffer from long carrier liftime induced large switching loss like Si thyristors, the peak temperature rise rather than dynamic avalanche breakdown is blamed for the safe operation area (SOA) failure, making further reduction of power loss in SiC GTOs even more important. In this paper, a 20 kV SiC GTO with direct carrier extraction access to its drift region (DA-GTO) is investigated to explore the benefit this structure could bring for SiC thyristors, namely achieving smaller switching loss and/or potential larger SOA with slight sacrifice in forward voltage drop at high current. The structure is formed by interleaved P + ion implantation into part of the thin N-injector layer based on conventional 20 kV SiC GTO. The SiC DA-GTO operates in BJT mode at low current, and in GTO mode with low forward voltage drop at high current. During turn-off process, it offers a direct current path to quickly sweep out the excess carriers in the P-drift region, thus speeds up the turn-off process and decreases the turn-off loss. Simulation results show that its turn-off loss reduces by 37.4%, contributing to 12.6% reduction in total power loss, compared with SiC GTO. Therefore, SiC DA-GTO is a very promising choice for next-generation power conversion systems.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%