Observation of current filaments in IGBTs with thermoreflectance microscopy
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Bhojani, Riteshkumar; Kowalsky, Jens; Lutz, Josef; Kendig, Dustin; Baburske, Roman; Schulze, Hans-Joachim; Niedernostheide, Franz-Josef
- Source
- 2018 IEEE 30th International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD) Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD), 2018 IEEE 30th International Symposium on. :164-167 May, 2018
- Subject
- Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Insulated gate bipolar transistors
Transmission line measurements
Temperature measurement
Metallization
Logic gates
Current measurement
Semiconductor device measurement
IGBT
short-circuit
current filaments
Thermo-reflectance microscopy
- Language
- ISSN
- 1946-0201
In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time experimentally measured current filaments in IGBTs under repetitive Short-Circuit (SC) events. These current filaments were discovered with the help of Thermo-Reflectance Microscopy (TRM). The destruction current as function of the applied collector-emitter voltage (V CE ) was determined for two differently wire-bonded 15A-1200V IGBT chips. The repetitive SC events in combination with TRM measurement indicate a wide range of non-destructive current filaments at different V CE . Similar filament formation under short-circuit conditions were observed in supporting TCAD device simulations based on multi-cell IGBT structure. These filaments have similar dimensions to the current filaments measured by TRM.