New Power MOSFET with Beyond-1D-Limit RSP-BV Trade-Off and Superior Reverse Recovery Characteristics

Abstract

The application of conventional power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is limited by the famous one-dimensional “silicon limit” (1D-limit) in the trade-off relationship between specific on-resistance (RSP) and breakdown voltage (BV). In this paper, a new power MOSFET architecture is proposed to achieve a beyond-1D-limit RSP-BV trade-off. Numerical TCAD (technology computer-aided design) simulations were carried out to comparatively study the proposed MOSFET, the conventional power MOSFET, and the superjunction MOSFET. All the devices were designed with the same breakdown voltage of ~550 V. The proposed MOSFET features a deep trench between neighboring p-bodies and multiple p-islands located at the sidewall and bottom of the trench. The proposed MOSFET allows a high doping concentration in the drift region, which significantly reduces its RSP compared to the conventional power MOSFET. The multiple p-islands split the electric field into multiple peaks and help the proposed MOSFET maintain a similar breakdown voltage to the conventional power MOSFET with the same drift region thickness. Another famous device technology, the superjunction MOSFET (SJ-MOSFET), also breaks the 1D-limit. However, the SJ-MOSFET suffers a snappy reverse recovery performance, which is a notorious drawback of SJ-MOSFET and limits the range of its application. On the contrary, the proposed MOSFET presents a superior reverse recovery performance and can be used in various power switching applications where hard commutation is required.

Transient Electro-Thermal Coupled Modeling of Three-Phase Power MOSFET Inverter during Load Cycles

“…Power semiconductors/modules inside inverters are the most crucial devices controlling the power conversion efficiency. In response to the urgent need for high-performance power conversion applications, the power semiconductor industry has recently seen rapid technological developments, such as insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) [ 1 , 2 ], metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) [ 3 , 4 ], and even wide bandgap (WBG) silicon carbide (SiC) [ 5 , 6 ] and gallium nitride (GaN) power devices [ 7 ]. In contrast to IGBTs, MOSFETs comprise a number of advantageous features, such as a higher switching frequency and lower switching loss; accordingly, they have been used in a wide range of industrial applications, such as converters and inverters.…”