A Novel Insulated Gate Triggered Thyristor With Schottky Barrier for Improved Repetitive Pulse Life and High-<italic>di/dt</italic> Characteristics

Abstract

In this paper, a novel insulated gate triggered thyristor with the Schottky barrier (SB-IGTT) is proposed for improved the repetitive pulse life and high-di/dt characteristics. Different from the conventional cathode shorted MOS-controlled thyristor (CS-MCT), an SB is specially imbedded to enlarge the effective turn-on area and enhance the electron-hole plasma spread during short duration pulse, which contributes significantly to relaxing the thermal concentration and improving the repetitive pulse life as well as achieves superior di/dt characteristics. The experimental results show that the proposed SB-IGTT continuously undergoes more than 220000 shots at the pulse frequency of 5 Hz, yielding a 10× longer repetitive pulse life than the conventional CS-MCT. Simultaneously, SB-IGTT performs a di/dt up to 120 kA/μs with peak current near 10 kA, increasing di/dt by about 20%. Improved repetitive pulse life and simultaneous superior di/dt characteristics indicate that the proposed SB-IGTT is suitable for repetitive pulse power applications.