15 kV SiC PiN diodes achieve 95% of avalanche limit and stable long-term operation Siddarth Sundaresan, Madhuri Marripelly, Svetlana Arshavsky, Ranbir Singh GeneSiC Semiconductor Inc. Dulles, VA 20166, USA email: [email protected] Abstract— This paper reports on ultra-high voltage, >15 kV SiC PiN rectifiers exhibiting >95% of the avalanche rating and 115 V/µm. This is one of a few reports on > 15 kV blocking voltages measured on any single semiconductor device, and the highest percentage of the avalanche limit ever reported on devices fabricated on > 100 µm thick SiC epilayers. Excellent stability of on-state voltage drop (VF) is displayed by 5.76 mm2 and largearea, 41 mm2 PiN rectifiers, when continually biased at high current densities for several days. The impact of carrier lifetime on the device performance for SiC bipolar devices with ultrathick (≥100 µm) base layers is investigated by comparing I-V-T characteristics of SiC PiN rectifiers fabricated on 100 µm and 130 µm thick epilayers. I. packages for detailed high-current, switching and long-term measurements. III. BLOCKING VOLTAGE MEASUREMENTS The onset of sharp avalanche breakdown at 15 kV (Figure 1) is observed on several PiN rectifiers, with extremely lowleakage currents preceding the breakdown voltage. The achievement of 15 kV blocking voltages corresponds to 115 V/µm and 95% of the avalanche breakdown limit for the 130 µm thick n- epilayer, calculated by direct integration of the 4H-SiC impact ionization co-efficients [1]. INTRODUCTION At 10 kV – 20 kV voltage ratings, 4H-SiC PiN rectifiers offer the best trade-off between on-state voltage drop, switching losses and high-temperature performance as compared to Si PiN or SiC Schottky/JBS rectifiers. These ultra-high voltage SiC PiN rectifiers are being developed as companion free-wheeling diodes for GeneSiC’s future product portfolio of 10-15 kV SiC transistors. This paper reports on detailed results from experimental on-state, blocking and longterm reliability characterization performed on SiC PiN rectifiers fabricated on 130 µm thick n- epilayers. II. EXPERIMENTAL SiC PiN rectifiers with 2.4 mm x 2.4 mm chip size (active area = 5.76 mm2) and 6.4 mm x 6.4 mm chip size (active area = 41 mm2) were fabricated on 130 µm thick, 6-7 x 1014 cm-3 doped n- 4H-SiC epilayers. The p+ emitter layers were 1.5 µm thick and doped to 1 x 1019 cm-3. Optimized edge termination for the PiN rectifiers was provided by a combination of GeneSiC-pioneered beveled mesa etching and p-type ionimplantation followed by high-temperature annealing for implant activation. Ohmic contacts to the p+ Anode and n+ Cathode layers was formed by Al-based and Ni- based metallization. Thick Al overlayers were deposited on the top and a solderable Au-based metallization was provided on the bottom for die-attaching to Cu baseplates. After on-wafer testing, selected die were assembled in custom- designed The funding from US Dept. of Energy under the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E) award # DE-AR0000112 and the support of Dr. Timothy Heidel is gratefully acknowledged Figure 1. 15 kV blocking voltages measured on several PiN diodes fabricated on 130 µm thick, 6x1014 cm-3 doped n- SiC epilayers, which corresponds to >95% of the avalanche breakdown limit. IV. ON-STATE CHARACTERISTICS An on-state voltage drop (VF) of 6 V and differential onresistance of 15.5 mΩ-cm2 are measured on the 5.76 mm2 rectifiers (Figure 2a) at 100 A/cm2 and 25 °C, which reduce to 4 V and 8 mΩ-cm2, respectively, at 225 °C. Likewise, the 41 mm2 rectifiers also exhibit a negative temperature co-efficient of VF (at 10 A) and ron,sp (Figure 2b) – 4.1 V and 25.5 mΩ-cm2 at 25 °C; 3.3 V and 9.9 mΩ-cm2 at 175 °C. The negative temperature co-efficient of VF measured on both the 5.76 mm2 and 41 mm2 PiN rectifiers is due to increasing high-level carrier lifetime (tHL) and the reduction of the built-in voltage at higher temperatures. The larger on-resistance recorded on the 41 mm2 rectifiers could be due to the less-effective vertical current spreading, and higher parasitic top metal spreading resistance. microwave photoconductive decay (µ-PCD), this suggests that the carrier lifetimes in the 130 µm thick SiC epilayers although high by 4H-SiC standards, are not sufficient for complete conductivity modulation of the entire thickness of the drift region. A first order estimate for the minimum carrier lifetime (tHL) for complete conductivity modulation of an ntype 4H-SiC base layer can be expressed as: tHL = d2/4Da (1) where d is the base layer thickness and Da is the ambipolar diffusion co-efficient, which can be easily derived using the electron and hole mobilities for 4H-SiC for the particular doping concentration of the n- epilayer. Plugging in electron and hole mobilities [3] of 800 cm2/Vs and 80 cm2/Vs to calculate Da in (1), the minimum required tHL can be calculated as 5 µs for a 90 µm thick n- epilayer, while it increases to 11.5 µs for a 130 µm thick epilayer. OCVD measurements on PiN rectifiers fabricated on 90 µm thick epilayers [2] showed that tHL increased from 4.5 µs at 25°C to 14 µs at 225°C, which can explain the drastic decrease in the ron,sp measured on the 130 µm PiN rectifiers at elevated temperatures. These results suggest that for optimum conductivity modulation of the ultra-thick (> 100 µm) SiC epilayers that are necessary for > 10 kV device fabrication, epi-growth or processing strategies for increasing the (roomtemperature) tHL above 10 µs need to be pursued. The carrier lifetime enhancement by the deep level reduction (DLR) process proposed in [4] is one alternative to increase the carrier lifetime during device processing. These approaches will be the subject of future investigations at GeneSiC. Figure 2. Forward bias I-V-T characteristics measured on (Top,a): 5.76 mm2 PiN rectifiers and (Bottom,b): 41 mm2 PiN rectifiers, both fabricated on 130 µm thick/6e1014 cm-3 doped n- epilayers. For comparison, the 25°C and 175°C forward bias characteristics previously reported on 41 mm2 rectifiers fabricated on 85 µm epilayers are also shown in (b). The temperature variation of ron,sp for these 130 µm PiN rectifiers are compared in Fig. 2 with the results reported earlier [2] on PiN rectifiers fabricated on 90 µm thick SiC epilayers. Significantly lower on-resistance and a much softer temperature dependence of ron,sp is observed in Fig. 3 for the PiN rectifiers fabricated on 90 µm thick SiC epilayers, as compared to the 15 kV rectifiers reported in this article. The on-resistance of a PiN rectifier is a function of the extent of conductivity modulation of the n- drift layer. Since very similar values (≈ 5 µs) of carrier lifetime were recorded on both the 90 µm and 130 µm thick SiC epiwafers by Figure 3. Temperature dependence of differential specific on-resistance in the range of 0.7-0.8 A, for 5.76 mm2 PiN rectifiers fabricated on 90 µm and 130 µm thick n- epilayers V. FORWARD BIAS DRIFT STABILITY One of the remaining bottlenecks for the commercialization of SiC bipolar devices is the basal plane dislocation (BPD) related drift of the on-state voltage drop, when biased continuously under forward bias conditions. We have previously reported [2] drift-free operation of SiC PiN rectifiers fabricated on 90 µm thick epilayers. In this work, representative 5.76 mm2 and 41 mm2 PiN rectifiers after packaging in special test coupons were subjected to continuous operation at forward bias current densities of 100 A/cm2 (0.8 A) and 40 A/cm2 (10 A) for 90 hours and 55 hours, respectively, at a controlled base plate temperature of 25°C. As shown in Fig. 4, after an initial stabilization of 5-10 hours, the VF of these PiN rectifiers displays excellent stability within 10 mV for the remainder of the duration of the test. The exact reasons for the contrasting trends shown by the 5.76 mm2 and 41 mm2 rectifiers during the initial stabilization period is unknown at this time. We did not observe any such stabilization period during our previous study on 90 µm PiN rectifiers. Figure 4. Evolution of on-state voltage drop (VF) for the 5.76 mm2 and 41 mm2, 15 kV SiC PiN rectifiers under DC current stress of 0.8 A (100 A/cm2) and 10 A (40 A/cm2), respectively. After an initial period of 5-10 hours, the VF exhibits excellent stability for the remainder of the test duration. REFERENCES [1] [2] [3] [4] A.O. Konstantinov, Q. Wahab, N. Nordell, U. Lindefelt, “Ionization rated and critical fields in 4H silicon carbide”, Appl. Phys. Lett. 71(7), 1997, pp. 90-92 S.G. Sundaresan, C. Sturdevant, M. Marripelly, E. Lieser, R. Singh, “12.9 kV SiC PiN diodes with low on-state drops and high carrier lifetimes”, Mater. Sci. Forum, 717-720, 2012, pp.949-952. T.T. Mnatsakanov, M.E. Levinshtein, L.I. Pomortseva, S.N. 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