Experimental and Numerical Investigations of Short-Circuit Failure Mechanisms for State-of-the-Art 1.2kV SiC Trench MOSFETs

Abstract

This paper is focused on the short-circuit capability and analysis of failure mechanism on relatively small DC power supply voltage for state-of-the-art 1.2 kV SiC trench MOSFETs. It is found that the gate-source SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> rapture could be a failure mechanism unique to the SiC MOSFETs. Further, the SiC trench MOSFETs with higher threshold voltage can effectively improve the short-circuit capabilities by reducing the probability of channel normally-on induced by the higher lattice temperature.