Research on the Failure Mechanism of High-Power GaAs PCSS

Shi, Wei; Ma, Cheng; Li, Mengxia

doi:10.1109/tpel.2014.2348493

Cited by 25 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 18 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…Therefore to obtain higher breakdown voltages, thicker GaN layers and optimized buffer layers would be advantageous. However, when compared to previously demonstrated lateral GaAs PCSSs, where the epitaxial layer thickness was 0.6 mm and the gap between pads was 2 mm to achieve a blocking voltage of 6 kV, 14 the GaN PCSS in this work could achieve >4 kV blocking voltage with only a 100 μm gap due to the superior critical electric field of GaN opposed to GaAs.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 60%

High Voltage GaN Lateral Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches

Koehler

Anderson

Khachatrian

et al. 2017

ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol.

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High voltage (>4000 V) GaN lateral photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs) were developed and characterized. The epitaxial structure consisted of 1.4 μm of semi-insulating GaN grown on a SiC substrate. Intrinsic mode operation, where above bandgap light is used to trigger the PCSS, results in the highest amount of photocurrent. These PCSSs can also be triggered in extrinsic mode, where sub-bandgap illumination excites carriers from extrinsic defect levels, but this results in a significantly lower photocurrent. Triggering at near bandgap with 10 V applied, the on-state photocurrent is over eight magnitudes higher than the dark off-state leakage, indicating extremely high responsivity. A 293 nm picosecond pulse width laser was used to determine the rise time of the PCSS to be ∼160 ps. Various geometry devices were fabricated, and the low voltage on-state current obeyed a linear trend as a function of perimeter/gap optically while optically gating the PCSS, which is analogous to the width/length of a metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor. Off-state breakdown voltages >4000 V were achieved and were likely limited by the thickness of the GaN epitaxial layer. Wide bandgap photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSSs), such as GaN PCSSs, have gained recent attention due to high critical electric field strength, high electron saturation velocity, and the ability to provide high power ultrafast devices.1 Previously, extrinsic mode, vertical GaN PCSSs were demonstrated on high resistivity freestanding hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) GaN substrates.2 However, operation of extrinsic mode PCSSs is governed by optical absorption at defect and/or impurity states located within the semiconductor's bandgap, resulting relatively low optical absorption and therefore low efficiency.3 But this low optical absorption translates into deep optical penetration, on the order of centimeters, which allows for vertical PCSS architectures. Intrinsic mode PCSSs rely on above excitation at or above the bandgap to promote electrons from the valence to conduction band, which can provide fast response time, but limits the penetration depth to only several microns, depending on the optical absorption of the semiconductor and the energy of the photons. This, however, also restricts intrinsic mode PCSSs to lateral architectures. Lateral devices can be easily scaled since the gap dimension is determined by photolithography rather than thick epitaxial growth.GaN PCSSs have previously been demonstrated on semi-insulating GaN achieved by Fe compensation doping in order to reduce leakage currents.4,5 However, Fe is known to have strong memory effects, which can redistribute Fe into subsequent films, as well as a narrow window of acceptable doping levels. 6 In addition, Fe creates deep electron traps (E C -0.9 eV), and deep hole traps (E V -0.9 eV), 7 which is beneficial for creating semi-insulating films, but can also result in charge traps with long time constants leading to current collapse in devices.8 PCSSs with fast response ...

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 60%

High Voltage GaN Lateral Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches

Koehler

Anderson

Khachatrian

et al. 2017

ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol.

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“…These two electrodes are similar and any of the electrodes can be used as the anode. The electron mobility is higher than 5500 cm 2 /(V.s) . The multilayered transparent dielectrics used for the passivation and insulation protection are deposited and coated on the surface of the SI‐GaAs PCSS, as shown in Figure .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The breakdown of PCSS includes the bulk breakdown and surface flashover which can also be named as the surface breakdown. At present, the bulk breakdown that commonly believed to be the thermal breakdown occurs mainly in the bulk of current filament under the high repetition . The surface breakdown of the semiconductor switch proves to be a hot research point that always happens during the working process of PCSS which limits the lifetime of PCSS.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation on the surface flashover of high gain SI‐GaAs PCSS

Shi

et al. 2018

Micro & Optical Tech Letters

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The GaAs photoconductive semiconductor switch (PCSS) is generally recognized currently as a leading power electronic device for its unique advantages. A major limitation of PCSS has been its surprisingly low voltage threshold for the surface flashover found when PCSS works at the high gain mode. In this paper, the surface flashover of high gain PCSS is studied by experiments. We propose that the non‐uniform distribution of the surface field that resulted from the photo‐activated charge domain (PACD) and the gas desorption is the key cause of such reducing of the SF field. SF6 ambient dielectric is efficient in increasing the surface field, and the experiment results show that the PCSS we developed could resist a voltage as high as 20 kV/cm when the ambient dielectric is 3 atmospheric SF6. This conclusion has the practical application of significance to improve the performance of the high gain PCSS, which is severely limited by the premature breakdown effects.

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“…Therefore, heat dissipation is a hot spot in the development of power devices. In device packaging, because of different packaging materials, the differences in thermal expansion coefficients of packaging materials leads to the accumulation of different degrees of thermal stresses and plastic strains and finally leads to failure problems such as solder wire separation, solder delamination, plastic packaging cracking delamination and so on (Arab and Feng, 2014; Shi et al , 2015). In addition, the increase in temperature also reduces the properties of the device, resulting in the influence of current load capacity and gate voltage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical simulation of reliability of single-sided/double-sided package interconnect structure under temperature cyclic load

Huang

Liu

2022

SSMT

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare the single-sided packaging structure and double-sided packaging structure of high-power module and study the overall heat dissipation performance and reliability of the module. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the single-sided packaging structure and double-sided packaging structure of power module are designed based on Wolfspeed products. This paper is analyzed by finite element method. First, the heat dissipation performance of single-sided packaging structure and double-sided packaging structure is analyzed; second, the deformation and stress of single-sided packaging structure and double-sided packaging structure are compared and analyzed; and finally, the cumulative plastic deformation of single-sided packaging and double-sided packaging structures are compared and analyzed, and the fatigue life of the structure is calculated based on the plastic deformation. Findings In the heat transfer simulation, under the same power input, the heat dissipation performance of single-sided packaging structure is not as good as that of double-sided packaging structure. Under the reliability simulation of the same temperature cycle standard, the maximum equivalent stress of single-sided packaging structure is lower than that of double-sided packaging structure, but the fatigue life prediction based on plastic strain shows that the fatigue life of double-sided packaging structure is not different from that of single-sided packaging structure. Originality/value This paper creatively simulates the thermal characteristics and reliability of single-sided packaging structure and double-sided packaging structure and proves the advantages of double-sided packaging structure compared with single-sided packaging structure from the aspects of heat transfer performance and reliability.

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Research on the Failure Mechanism of High-Power GaAs PCSS

Cited by 25 publications

References 18 publications

High Voltage GaN Lateral Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches

High Voltage GaN Lateral Photoconductive Semiconductor Switches

Investigation on the surface flashover of high gain SI‐GaAs PCSS

Numerical simulation of reliability of single-sided/double-sided package interconnect structure under temperature cyclic load

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