Research and Application of Wide Band Gap Semiconductors

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Semiconductor Devices".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2025) | Viewed by 2123

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK
Interests: semiconductor devices; power electronics; WBG and UWBG semiconductors; power devices and circuits; 4H-SiC; diamond; GaN; TCAD mixed-mode modelling and design

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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI), University of Naples Federico II, Via Claudio 21, 80125 Naples, Italy
Interests: power electronics; power semiconductor devices; GaN; 4H-SiC; electro-thermal modelling; SPICE modelling

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The emerging generation of power semiconductor devices based on wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors is revolutionizing the power device market. Improved material quality and painstaking R&D efforts have enabled superior device performances for 4H-SiC MOSFETs and GaN HEMTs when compared to equivalent Si-based solutions.

However, the success of future generation devices relies upon addressing several scientific challenges as follows:

  1. Optimization of material growth towards low defect density substrates and thick epi layers.
  2. Comprehensive understanding of the role of defects in the electrical and thermal performance of final devices.
  • Device design optimization and co-optimization of passivation, insulation, and packaging solutions to increase power densities without compromising the reliability and long-term lifetime.
  1. Comprehensive understanding of the devices’ reliability and degradation phenomena (such as time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), hot carrier injection (HCJ), dynamic Ron, bipolar degradation, threshold voltage instability, interface traps, and bulk traps, etc.), as well as subsequent design solutions to mitigate them.
  2. Optimization of converter and gate driver architectures to fully exploit the potential of the latest generation of WBG semiconductors.
  3. vi) Understanding the potential and limitations of a new class of materials, namely UWBG devices (Diamond, AlN, Ga2O3), and evaluating whether novel device designs and solutions can outperform current commercial devices.

This Special Issue aims to highlight and collect the latest advancements in device fabrication, material growth, device electro-thermal modeling and simulations, lateral and vertical novel device configurations, reliability tests and measurements, as well as converter- and system-related solutions for both WBG and UWBG devices. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:

  • WBG and UWBG power semiconductor devices (GaN, 4H-SiC, Diamond, Gallium Oxide, AlN, etc.)
  • Advanced WBG material epitaxy and substrate growth
  • Thermal optimization of WBG devices
  • System-level aspects of WBG and UWBG devices
  • Monolithic and heterogeneous integration
  • System- and device-level reliability

Dr. Nazareno Donato
Dr. Alessandro Borghese
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • WBG semiconductors
  • UWBG semiconductors
  • 4H-SiC FETs
  • GaN HEMT
  • vertical GaN
  • AlN
  • diamond electronics
  • power devices
  • finite element modelling
  • reliability
  • SiC MOSFET

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 2521 KiB  
Article
Threshold Voltage Recovery Time Measurement Technique Post VTH Instability in Normally-Off p-Gate GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors
by Karthick Murukesan and Florin Udrea
Electronics 2024, 13(20), 4118; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13204118 - 18 Oct 2024
Viewed by 1537
Abstract
In this study, we propose a simple measurement technique to quantitatively measure the time taken by threshold voltage of normally-off p-GaN AlGaN/GaN HEMTs to recover from a nominal operational gate stress-induced instability. The proposed technique eliminates the requirement to perform a full transfer [...] Read more.
In this study, we propose a simple measurement technique to quantitatively measure the time taken by threshold voltage of normally-off p-GaN AlGaN/GaN HEMTs to recover from a nominal operational gate stress-induced instability. The proposed technique eliminates the requirement to perform a full transfer characteristic sweep post-stress, thereby eliminating the measurement-induced instability effect, often colluding precise recovery time measurement. The rate of recovery and extracted recovery times hold significance in empirically correlating the location of traps in the p-GaN or AlGaN barrier region causing VTH instability. The gate of the HEMT is stressed at nominal operational drive voltages 1.5 V, 2 V, and 4 V for various time intervals from 500 μs to 100 s, and the time taken for the drain current to recover to prestress levels measured at near-threshold voltage (~1.1 VTH) is measured as the threshold voltage recovery time. With increasing gate stress voltages, 2DEG gets trapped at relatively deeper trap energy levels at the AlGaN/GaN interface requiring more emission time during the process of recovery, mandating larger recovery times. At higher stress voltage of 4 V, the Schottky gate leakage current is high enough enabling injected holes to cross the AlGaN barrier and counter-compensate for the deeply trapped 2DEG, requiring relatively the same recovery times as lower stress voltages where the gate leakage is negligibly small. With increasing stress time, the amount of 2DEG trapped increases, requiring more recovery time to de-trap and beyond a certain time, saturation of the trap density occurs causing the recovery time to plateau. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research and Application of Wide Band Gap Semiconductors)
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