seminar
Prof. Francesco Velardi, the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Italy, will talk on "RELIABILITY OF SILICON CARBIDE BASED POWER DEVICES IN RADIATION ENVIRONMENT," REGISTER
December 13, 2020
(Friday, 10:30-11:30 am)
Abstract
Silicon Carbide is an attractive wide band-gap semiconductor material for high-frequency, high-temperature, and high-power applications. Its critical electric field is almost ten times higher than that of silicon and allows the design of power devices with active layers much thinner and more doped than silicon devices with the same blocking capability. The advantage of lower on-resistance, lower parasitic capacitance, and lower conduction losses explains the considerable interest shown by designers of power electronics converters in recent years.
Although wide band-gap semiconductors have high radiation immunity, the power devices based on these semiconductors show a superior radiation sensitivity concerning their silicon counterparts. This feature is ascribable to their thinner active region that can be easily traversed by the relatively low energy ion species (tens of MeV) directly available or that can be generated in such a device by energetic protons or neutrons by spallation. This observation is cause for concern about a possible intrinsic weakness of these devices to Single Event Effects (SEEs) induced by ion impacts.
The lecture offers an advanced study on the SEE reliability of new generation silicon carbide-based power devices available on the market:
• The Wide Band-Gap Semiconductors
• Single Event Burnout in SiC Schottky Diodes
• The SiC Schottky diode
• The Experimental Data
• The Electrical Simulation Study
• The Thermal Simulation Study
• Single Event Effects in SiC Power MOSFETs
• The SiC Power MOSFET
• The Latent Gate Damage: Experimental Data and Simulation Study
• The Progressive Drain Damage
• Single Event Burnout in SiC Power MOSFETs
Bio
Francesco Velardi received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering with a thesis on the identification of complex nonlinear dynamic systems from the University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy, in 1999, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and information engineering from the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, Cassino, Italy, in 2003. He is currently an aggregate professor at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio. His current research interests include modeling, simulation, and reliability study of power devices. His collaboration with ASI, ESA, CNES, INFN, ENEA, SIEMENS, ANSALDO BREDA, ST-MICROELECTRONICS, FAIRCHILD led to the publication of more than 50 international papers.