Drift-free 10-kV, 20-A 4H-SiC PiN diodes

Abstract

As impressive as the advancement in 4H-SiC material quality has been, 4H-SiC PiN diodes continue to suffer from irreversible, forward-voltage instabilities. In this work, we describe PiN diodes designed to block 10 kV and conduct 20 A at less than 4.5 V, which were fabricated on 4H-SiC PiN epitaxial layers that were grown with an innovative epitaxial process that has been developed specifically to suppress V_F drift. The diodes fabricated on epitaxial layers that implemented this new epitaxy process showed excellent V_F stability, with 86% of the diodes drifting less than 0.1 V during forward current stressing at 10 A (50 A/cm²) for 30 min. However, these improvements in V_F drift come with a cost in blocking yield, as the surface morphology and other crystal defects imparted by the epitaxial process resulted in only 1 of 50 diodes reaching the 10-kV blocking specification. Nevertheless, the remarkable progress in V_F drift yield brings us closer to commercialization of high-power 4H-SiC PiN diodes.