Junction termination extension for near-ideal breakdown voltage in p-n junctions

Extremely high breakdown voltages with very low leakage current have been achieved in plane and planar p-n junctions by using an ion-implanted junction extension for precise control of the depletion region charge in the junction termination. A theory is presented that shows a greatly improved control of both the peak surface and bulk electric fields in reverse biased p-n junctions. Experimental results show breakdown voltages greater than 95 percent of the ideal breakdown voltage with lower leakage currents than corresponding unimplanted devices. As an example, plane-junction moat-etch-terminated diodes with a normal breakdown voltage of 1050 V and a 0.5-mA leakage current become 1400 V (1450 ideal) devices with a 5-µA leakage current. Planar junctions, which broke down at 300 V, blocked as much as 1400 V if JTE terminated. Since planar junctions are of the greatest interest, we incorporated multiple field ring, field plate, and JTE terminations on a mask set and fabricated and tested thousands of devices. The results clearly showed that the ideal breakdown voltage can be achieved with less than 200 µm with JTE, where the same area would lead to 30 to 45 percent of the ideal with field rings and up to 40 to 50 percent of the ideal when used with field rings combined with field plates. Eight rings, even combined with a field plate, yielded less than 80 percent of the ideal breakdown voltage and required about 400 µm of device periphery.