International audienceThis paper presents experimental robustness tests made on Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs and SiC Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) submitted to short-circuit operations (SC) or current limitation modes. For SiC MOSFETs, a gate leakage current is detected before failure without being responsible for the immediate failure. Nevertheless this gate leakage current is not without effect on the integrity of the SiC MOSFETs. Based on several robustness tests performed on SiC MOSFETs and on the comparison with experimental results obtained with SiC BJTs, the paper points out two main failure modes for SiC MOSFETs. The first one results in a simultaneously short circuit between drain and gate and drain and source and the second one in a degradation of the insulation between gate and source leading to a short circuit between gate and source. For some tested devices, the failure appears in a very interesting open state mode between drain and source after physical short-circuit between gate and source with a mode of failure very similar to those observed for SiC BJT

Abstract-This paper describes and evaluates an original boost converter able to harvest energy from low-power and lowvoltage power sources. Design and sizing are made according to specifications issued from the stringent characteristics of microbial electric generators such as microbial fuel cells and microbial desalination cells. The harvested power is 10mW under input voltage Vin=0.3V (33mA input current). The design of the converter is adapted from a classical boost topology. It includes a self-oscillating circuit for autonomous operation, and a simple analog maximum power point regulation. Measurements of the conceived discrete realization enable evaluation of the circuit. Best global efficiency of 74% is achieved under realistic harvesting conditions.