Short-Circuit Protection Circuits for Silicon-Carbide Power Transistors

• Published in: IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) Vol. 63; no. 4; pp. 1995 - 2004
• Main Authors: Sadik, Diane-Perle, Colmenares, Juan, Tolstoy, Georg, Peftitsis, Dimosthenis, Bakowski, Mietek, Rabkowski, Jacek, Nee, Hans-Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.04.2016; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Bipolar transistors; BJT; BJT Bipolar junction transistor (BJT); Circuit faults; Driver circuit; Driver circuits; Electric network analysis; Electric power system protection; Electrical Engineering; Elektro- och systemteknik; Energy gap; Failure analysis; Fault detection; Fault protection; JFET; JFET Power MOSFET; JFETs; junction field-effect transistor (JFET); Junction gate field effect transistors; Logic gates; MOSFET; MOSFET devices; Power MOSFET; Power semiconductor devices; Power transistors; Reconfigurable hardware; Reliability; Reliability analysis; Reliability and availability; Semiconducting silicon; Semiconductor device reliability; Semiconductor devices; Short circuit currents; Short-circuit conditions; Short-circuit current; Short-circuit protection; Silicon; Silicon carbide; Silicon Carbide (SiC); Silicon carbides (SiC); Thermal device simulations; Voltage measurement; Wide band gap semiconductors; wide-bandgap semiconductors; junction field-effect transistor (JFET); Bipolar junction transistor (BJT); fault detection; driver circuits; power MOSFET; fault protection; wide-bandgap semiconductors; failure analysis; semiconductor device reliability; short-circuit current; silicon carbide (SiC)
• ISSN: 0278-0046; 1557-9948; 1557-9948
• DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2015.2506628

An experimental analysis of the behavior under short-circuit conditions of three different silicon-carbide (SiC) 1200-V power devices is presented. It is found that all devices take up a substantial voltage, which is favorable for detection of short circuits. A transient thermal device simulation was performed to determine the temperature stress on the die during a short-circuit event, for the SiC MOSFET. It was found that, for reliability reasons, the short-circuit time should be limited to values well below Si IGBT tolerances. Guidelines toward a rugged design for short-circuit protection (SCP) are presented with an emphasis on improving the reliability and availability of the overall system. A SiC device driver with an integrated SCP is presented for each device-type, respectively, where a short-circuit detection is added to a conventional driver design in a simple way. The SCP driver was experimentally evaluated with a detection time of 180 ns. For all devices, short-circuit times well below 1 μs were achieved.