Title | ||
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Short-Circuit Characteristics and High-Current Induced Oscillations in a 1200-V/80-mΩ Normally-Off SiC/GaN Cascode Device |
Abstract | ||
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A normally-
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SiC-JFET/GaN-HEMT cascode device is recently proposed, featuring a cascode configuration that incorporates a high-voltage (HV, e.g., 1200 V) silicon-carbide (SiC) junction field effect transistor (JFET) delivering the HV blocking capability and a low-voltage (LV) enhanced-mode (E-mode) gallium-nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) providing the normally-
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gate control. This all-wide-bandgap device exhibits superior thermal stability and high switching speed compared to its counterparts, e.g., the SiC/Si cascode device. In this article, we study short-circuit (SC) characteristics of a 1200-V/80-mΩ SiC/GaN cascode device by considering the interactions between the SiC and GaN devices. The single-event SC withstand time (SCWT) of the demonstrated SiC/GaN cascode device is tested to be ∼3
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s under a dc-bus voltage (
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) of 600 V when the turn-
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gate voltage (
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) is set to 5 V. The SC failure occurs due to the formation of hot spots induced by thermal-runaway leakage currents inside the SiC JFET. The SCWT of the cascode device could be improved by applying a moderate
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(e.g., SCWT = ∼6.5
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s at
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= 3.5 V under
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= 600 V) without affecting the
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-state resistance (
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). However, it is identified that current oscillations tend to be triggered during the SC period when
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is too low (e.g., lower than 3 V). The oscillation behavior is attributed to the energy stored in the interconnection parts between the SiC and GaN devices. The harmful oscillations could be suppressed by applying higher
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, which drives the SiC JFET into low-transconductance mode by modulating the drain-to-source voltage (
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) of the LV GaN HEMT. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
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2022 | 10.1109/TIE.2021.3135644 | IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics |
Keywords | DocType | Volume |
Cascode configuration,E-mode gallium nitride high electron mobility transistor (GaN-HEMT),normally-off,oscillations,overvoltage,short circuit,silicon carbide (SiC) junction field effect transistor (JFET) | Journal | 69 |
Issue | ISSN | Citations |
12 | 0278-0046 | 0 |
PageRank | References | Authors |
0.34 | 6 | 4 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
---|---|---|---|
Gang Lyu | 1 | 1 | 1.40 |
Jiahui Sun | 2 | 0 | 0.68 |
Yuru Wang | 3 | 0 | 0.68 |
Kevin J. Chen | 4 | 11 | 7.09 |