Single event burnout in power diodes: Mechanisms and models

Albadri, Abdulrahman M.; Schrimpf, R.D.; Galloway, K.F.; Walker, D. G.

doi:10.1016/j.microrel.2005.06.015

Cited by 33 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…It has generally been thought that there are separate mechanisms responsible for the catastrophic failures observed in silicon power diodes (localized avalanche breakdown due to ion-induced electric field spikes) and silicon power MOSFETs (parasitic bipolar junction transistor) [8]. A natural assumption is that separate mechanisms are also responsible for SEB in SiC power diodes and MOSFETs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ion-Induced Energy Pulse Mechanism for Single-Event Burnout in High-Voltage SiC Power MOSFETs and Junction Barrier Schottky Diodes

Ball

Hutson

Javanainen

et al. 2020

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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Heavy ion data suggest that a common mechanism is responsible for single-event burnout in 1200 V power MOSFETs and junction barrier Schottky diodes. Similarly, heavy ion data suggest a common mechanism is also responsible for leakage current degradation in both devices. This mechanism, based on ion-induced, highlylocalized energy pulses, is demonstrated in simulations and shown to be capable of causing degradation and singleevent burnout for both the MOSFETs and JBS diodes.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ion-Induced Energy Pulse Mechanism for Single-Event Burnout in High-Voltage SiC Power MOSFETs and Junction Barrier Schottky Diodes

Ball

Hutson

Javanainen

et al. 2020

IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.

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“…There are still a number of issues where additional work is needed, 2,12,56,57,79,[200][201][202][203][204][205][206][207][208] including:…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Review—Ionizing Radiation Damage Effects on GaN Devices

Pearton

Ren

Patrick

et al. 2015

ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol.

267

130

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Gallium Nitride based high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) are attractive for use in high power and high frequency applications, with higher breakdown voltages and two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) density compared to their GaAs counterparts. Specific applications for nitride HEMTs include air, land and satellite based communications and phased array radar. Highly efficient GaNbased blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) employ AlGaN and InGaN alloys with different compositions integrated into heterojunctions and quantum wells. The realization of these blue LEDs has led to white light sources, in which a blue LED is used to excite a phosphor material; light is then emitted in the yellow spectral range, which, combined with the blue light, appears as white. Alternatively, multiple LEDs of red, green and blue can be used together. Both of these technologies are used in high-efficiency white electroluminescent light sources. These light sources are efficient and long-lived and are therefore replacing incandescent and fluorescent lamps for general lighting purposes. Since lighting represents 20-30% of electrical energy consumption, and because GaN white light LEDs require ten times less energy than ordinary light bulbs, the use of efficient blue LEDs leads to significant energy savings. GaN-based devices are more radiation hard than their Si and GaAs counterparts due to the high bond strength in III-nitride materials. The response of GaN to radiation damage is a function of radiation type, dose and energy, as well as the carrier density, impurity content and dislocation density in the GaN. The latter can act as sinks for created defects and parameters such as the carrier removal rate due to trapping of carriers into radiation-induced defects depends on the crystal growth method used to grow the GaN layers. The growth method has a clear effect on radiation response beyond the carrier type and radiation source. We review data on the radiation resistance of AlGaN/GaN and InAlN/GaN HEMTs and GaN-based LEDs to different types of ionizing radiation, and discuss ion stopping mechanisms. The primary energy levels introduced by different forms of radiation, carrier removal rates and role of existing defects in GaN are discussed. The carrier removal rates are a function of initial carrier concentration and dose but not of dose rate or hydrogen concentration in the nitride material grown by Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition. Proton and electron irradiation damage in HEMTs creates positive threshold voltage shifts due to a decrease in the two dimensional electron gas concentration resulting from electron trapping at defect sites, as well as a decrease in carrier mobility and degradation of drain current and transconductance. State-of-art simulators now provide accurate predictions for the observed changes in radiation-damaged HEMT performance. Neutron irradiation creates more extended damage regions and at high doses leads to Fermi level pinning while 60 Co γ-ray irradiation leads to much smaller changes in HEMT drain ...

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“…Time (s) ps, the temperature rapidly begins to drop as the deposited charges are quickly collected at the electrodes and Joule heating is reduced. While impact ionized multiplication of the carriers becomes significant for times greater than lO ps (halting the temperature drop at about 567 K), the remaining charge density and reverse bias voltage are low enough that the contribution of self-heating from impact ionized carriers only feeds back into excitation of thermal carriers enough to produce a temperature increase back to 634 K. High carrier density and high reverse bias voltage is known to produce feedback-enforced thermal runaway in PN diodes at much higher voltages (thousands of volts) [10][11][12][13]. None of the simulations for this device with reverse bias voltages at or below 150 V underwent thermal runaway, suggesting another mechanism than that observed in PN diodes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Simulation for risk assessment of diode single event burnout

Theiss

Moision

Foran

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Aerospace Conference

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High voltage Schottky diodes, often used in DC-to DC converters are susce p tible to single event burnout (SEB) due to energetic p article strike, p osing a concern for their use in space com p onents. Prior to recent test re p orts, diode SEB had not been considered a risk to space programs despite the phenomenon having been studied in high p ower terrestrial PN diodes in the 1990s. Schottky diodes have been engineered to prevent premature breakdown under high reverse bias voltage and minimize leakage currents at the edge of the contact electrode. Graded passivation structures, p+ doped guard rings, and a metallization field p late and thick field oxide help to mitigate failures due to the high electric fields resulting from shar p edge effects at the contact electrode. Recent heavy ion strike data indicates a tendency to failure along the guard ring structure and an effective drop in failure rate of two orders of magnitude has been observed after p rotective masking of the diode edge that includes this area. Due to the lack of comprehensive test data and understanding of the exact p hysics of failure, SEB in Schottky diodes has an uncertain im p act on reliability. Existing s p ace contractor derating guidelines may already be sufficient to mitigate this failure but with an uncertain margin that could further depend on the diode type, design, and implementation. We investigate the observed p referential SEB through physics-based computer modeling using Silvaco TCAD. We p erform transient electro-thermal simulations on three-dimensional structures derived from destructive physical analysis (DPA) of failed diodes and failure sites. This effort should better the understanding of the risk of diode SEB by cou p ling numerical modeling with direct observations of failure.

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Single event burnout in power diodes: Mechanisms and models

Cited by 33 publications

References 27 publications

Ion-Induced Energy Pulse Mechanism for Single-Event Burnout in High-Voltage SiC Power MOSFETs and Junction Barrier Schottky Diodes

Ion-Induced Energy Pulse Mechanism for Single-Event Burnout in High-Voltage SiC Power MOSFETs and Junction Barrier Schottky Diodes

Review—Ionizing Radiation Damage Effects on GaN Devices

Simulation for risk assessment of diode single event burnout

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