3.1. Case1:Expansion of P+Body Contact Area
N+, P-well, and N-drift in the MOSFET form a parasitic NPN bipolar junction transistor (BJT), corresponding to the emitter, base, and collector region of the BJT. Therefore, the basic structure of SiC MOSFET adopts P+body contact area at the source, which means that the emission and base of the BJT are connected and short circuited, thereby suppressing parasitic BJT. But when the SEE causes BJT to turn on, the current amplification effect of the BJT can cause a large current to be generated inside the device. Consequently, one idea to increase the device’s SEB threshold is to further suppress the bipolar amplification effect of the BJT, thereby achieving the goal of reinforcement. In this section, SiC MOSFET is designed against radiation by adjusting the area of P+, mainly by extending the P+body contact area towards the gate direction. The specific schematic diagram is shown in
Figure 6:
In this section, the SEB effect was studied when the P+body contact area is extended in the a, b, and c directions as shown in
Figure 6. The simulation results are shown in
Table 2.
When the P+body contact area changes towards three different positions a, b, and c, the impact on device performance is shown in
Table 2. Overall, as the P+body contact area expands towards positions a, b, and c, the SEB threshold voltage gradually increase, and the static characteristics are almost unaffected at positions a and b. However, when it expands to position c, the third quadrant conduction voltage of the SBD embedded in SiC MOSFET devices will increase. Therefore, reinforcement is considered without affecting the static characteristics of the device, compared to position a, position b has a higher SEB threshold voltage, which has a better reinforcement effect on the SEB when incident from the source pole, can serve as an extension of the P+body contact area to improve the device’s resistance to SEB.
The transient current curves of the extended position b in the P+body contact area under different biases are shown in
Figure 7. Heavy ions are vertically incident into SiC MOSFET from position C of the source in
Section 2.3.
3.2. Case2:Design of Multi-Layer N-Type Interval Buffer Layer
According to the variation regularity of the maximum electricfield of the SEE analyzed in
Section 2.4, it can be concluded that when heavy ions are incident into SiC MOSFET, the concentration of carriers generated by impact ionization under drain voltage rapidly increases. Under the electricfield, due to the aggregation of electrons towards the homojunction formed by substrate/N-drift, where the high electricfield gradually transfers to. Consequently, a reinforcement approach is to disperse the electricfield at the homojunction formed by substrate/N-drift, and the schematic diagram of the reinforcement structure is shown in
Figure 8:
Firstly, the thickness of the buffer layer needs to be considered. In this paper, all the thickness of the three buffer layers with multi-layer N-type is 0.8μm.
3.2.1. Design of Buffer1
In this paper, The doping concentration of the CSL layer is higher than that of the N-drift, which makes it easier for heavy ion incident devices to generate electron-hole pairs and enter the N-drift through the CSL layer, and then transfer to the homojunction formed by the N-drift/substrate, thereby transferring high electricfield to the homojunction. Therefore, buffer1 is set to to form a corresponding potential barrier to slow down the drift speed of electron-hole pairs generated by SEE to the substrate surface. The distance between buffer1 and the CSL layer, as well as the doping concentration of buffer1, have a significant impact on the intrinsic breakdown voltage of the device and whether the subsequent addition of buffer2 and buffer3 can achieve the goal of SEB reinforcement. In this section, the distance between buffer1 and the CSL layer is the thickness of the CSL layer. By setting a fixed doping concentration for buffer2 and buffer3 firstly, the doping concentration of buffer1 is changed to study the variation regularity of SEB reinforcement.
Table 3 shows the changes in device performance when the doping concentration of buffer1 is changed. It can be seen that the SEB threshold voltage remains almost unchanged as the doping concentration of buffer1 increases, while the breakdown voltage decreases significantly. Therefore, considering minimizing the doping concentration of buffer1 on the basis of having a SEB reinforcement effect to minimize the impact on the breakdown voltage. Research has shown that removing buffer1 directly cannot achieve the goal of SEB reinforcement. In this paper, the doping concentration of buffer1 is 1×10
15cm
−3, that is, the doping concentration of buffer1 is that of N-drift is superimposed by 1×10
15cm
−3, and the doping concentration of N-drift is 5×10
15cm
−3. As a result, the actual doping concentration in the buffer1 is 6×10
15cm
−3. There is still a small concentration difference between the N-drift and the buffer1, forming a potential barrier, which can achieve the goal of SEB reinforcement.
3.2.2. Optimization Design of Buffer2 and Buffer3
The analysis process found that the doping concentration of buffer2 and buffer3 has a relatively small impact on the breakdown voltage of the device, but has a greater impact on the SEB threshold. It is necessary to design the doping concentrations of buffer2 and buffer3 reasonably to ensure that prevents the buffer layer from penetrating when heavy ion incidence produces SEE leading to the depletion layer broadening effect occur inside the device under the electricfield. At the same time, it bears some of the high electricfield at the substrate/N-drift and disperses the severe impact ionization caused by the high electricfield at the substrate/N-drift. Overall, the doping concentrations of buffer2 and buffer3 need to initially meet the requirements of 5.0×1015cm−3<Dbuffer2<Dbuffer3<1.0×1019cm−3.
Table 4 shows the impact of optimized design analysis of buffer2 and buffer3 with different doping concentrations on the SEB threshold voltage and static characteristics of the device. Taking into account the impact on the performance of the device, doping concentrations of buffer2 and buffer3 were selected to be 3.0×1017cm-3 and 6.0×1018cm-3 respectively for SEB resistance. The transient current over time after optimized design of buffer2 and buffer3 is shown in
Figure 9. Heavy ions are vertically incident into SiC MOSFET from position A which is incident from the center region of the JFET in
Section 2.3.
The electricfield distribution in the device at different time is shown in
Figure 10. it can be seen that before SEB, the electricfield inside the device reaches its maximum at the surface. With the change of time, the electricfield peak inside the SiC MOSFET device also changes accordingly. As time goes on, the electricfield peak inside the device gradually shifts, and the electricfield peak is no longer concentrated at the homogeneous junction formed by the N-/substrate. Instead, it spreads towards the direction of buffer layer. This is because the electricfield on the substrate surface is dispersed by the increased buffer layer, thus increasing the SEB threshold voltage.
The transfer diagram of electricfield distribution before or after SEB is shown in
Figure 11.
3.3. Case3:Device Optimized by Comprehensive Reinforcement
After the design of SEB reinforcement according to the incident positions in different regions, the device structure is synthesized as shown in
Figure 12.
The changes in the basic characteristics of the device after design of comprehensive reinforcement are shown in
Table 5. It can be seen that the SEB threshold voltage of heavy ions are incident from position C at the source of the device decreases by 0.008%, while the SEB threshold voltage of position A which is at the the center of the JFET increases by 33%. At the same time, the breakdown voltage of the device decreases by 14%. However, this part of the voltage reduction can be seen as a reduction in the redundant voltage. Generally, the breakdown voltage maintained a 30% margin on the basis of the required withstand voltage when designing the device, while the reinforced device only has 19% redundant voltage left on the basis of the required withstand voltage.
After the design of comprehensive reinforcement, the SEB threshold voltage when heavy ions are incident from position C is actually lower than that of the SEB threshold voltage when using P+body contact area expansion reinforcement design alone. However, the SEB threshold voltage when heavy ions are incident from position A is higher than that of the SEB threshold voltage when using multi-layer N-type interval buffer layer reinforcement design alone. Below is an analysis of the reasons for this result.
Figure 13 shows the equivalent circuit of different regions after the design of comprehensive reinforcement. For the JFET region, the use of multi-layer N-type interval buffer layer reinforcement is equivalent to connecting three resistors in series on the basis of the integrated SBD, which can disperse the electricfield and greatly improve the SEB threshold voltage when incident from the center position of the JFET region, achieving a remarkable irradiation reinforcement effect.
For BJT composed of N+, P-well, and N-drift ithin the device, using the design of P+body contact region expansion reinforcement is equivalent to adding one resistor to the emitter of the BJT. Increasing the emitter resistance is equivalent to enhancing voltage negative feedback, which is equivalent to reducing the input voltage of the BJT, thus playing a role in radiation reinforcement; After adopting the design of a multi-layer N-type interval buffer layer reinforcement, it is equivalent to connecting three resistors in series with the collector of the BJT. Increasing the collector resistance weakens the negative voltage feedback effect, which is equivalent to increasing the input voltage of the BJT, thereby weakening the device’s radiation resistance; as a result, after adopting the design of a combination of P+body contact area expansion and multi-layer N-type interval buffer layer reinforcement, the reinforcement and suppression effect of BJT is cancelled out.
The SEB threshold voltage when heavy ions are incident from the source region and JFET region is generally significantly different, and the SEB threshold voltage when incident from the most sensitive position in the JFET region is much lower than that when incident from the most sensitive position in the source region. Accordingly, increasing the SEB threshold voltage when incident from the more sensitive position in the JFET is equivalent to improving the radiation resistance of the entire device. Overall, the SEB threshold voltage of the device has increased significantly, and the performance against SEE has also been significantly enhanced.