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Transcript
MSE SEMINAR February 26, 2010 113 McBryde Hall 3:30 – 4:30 Refreshments at 3:00 Dr. Brett A. Hull Cree, Inc. Durham, NC “Silicon Carbide Power Electronic Devices: From Fundamental Materials Research to Marketplace” ABSTRACT There has been a great deal of interest in employing silicon carbide in the fabrication of semiconductor devices since the early days of the development of Si integrated electronic devices. It was recognized that the fundamental characteristics of SiC, such as its wide bandgap and high critical breakdown electric field, made it an excellent candidate for the burgeoning integrated circuit revolution. Unfortunately, it took decades for the technology needed (both SiC bulk single crystal growth and SiC homoepitaxy) to produce SiC of suitable quality for electronic device applications to reach the level at which device research could be conducted. Today, SiC-based power electronic devices are poised to significantly improve the efficiency of power switching systems, in everything from power supplies to photovoltaic and wind power inverters, to hybrid and electric vehicle motor drives and power conversion systems. The benefits of SiC for power semiconductor devices (devices designed to operate at high voltages in the off-state while conducting large amounts of current in the on-state) have long been recognized. The high critical breakdown electric field, at about 10x that of single crystal Si, allows for the fabrication of devices that can block to a given voltage with a blocking layer that is roughly 10x thinner than can be achieved with Si. This reduced thickness leads to a device with an on-resistance that can be significantly lower than its Si-based counterpart. Furthermore, with a bandgap of 3.2 eV (for the 4H SiC polytype, the most typically employed), SiC devices have the potential to be operated at much higher temperatures than can Si devices. These fundamental 4H SiC properties allow for unipolar SiC devices (Schottky diodes and MOSFETs, as an example) to have comparable blocking and on-state performance as bipolar Si devices (PiN diodes and insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs)), with much smaller chip sizes. Since bipolar devices are susceptible to large electron and hole storage times during switching, by replacing the Si bipolar devices with SiC unipolar devices, huge power switching system efficiency gains can be achieved. These gains can be realized as significantly reduced power losses at a given frequency, but there are perhaps much greater opportunities to improve system efficiency by operating at the higher frequencies that SiC power electronic devices permit. A broad overview of SiC power electronic devices will be provided. Included in this overview will be a brief introduction to power semiconductor devices, the basis for using SiC as a Si replacement in these devices, and some general comments on the single crystal growth of SiC and on SiC homoepitaxy. Device overviews will also be given, including junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diodes, PiN diodes and MOSFETs designed for blocking 1200 V to 10 kV. BIOSKETCH Brett A. Hull received the B.S. degree in materials science and engineering, Summa Cum Laude, from The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, VA, USA in 1998. He then was awarded the Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering from The Pennsylvania State University in University Park, PA, USA in 2004. He is currently a Device Scientist in the Power Semiconductor Device Research and Development group at Cree, Inc., in Durham, NC, USA. He has authored or co-authored over 15 publications in wide bandgap semiconductor processing and device development. Current research activities at Cree, Inc., include design, development, and fabrication of high power electronic devices based on 4H SiC, including unipolar and bipolar rectifiers and MOSFETs designed for operation from 1200 V to 10 kV.