Turing's instability as a failure mechanism of GTOs

The destructive phenomena caused by the so called Turing's instability (periodic in space) is illustrated for the case of GTO switching-off process. Using the simplified 3D analytical approach it is shown that this instability can emerge when the whole system still remains in the state with the positive differential resistance but the differential resistance of its active "hidden" part yet becomes negative. The suggested model explains satisfactorily the experiments on spatially periodic destruction of GTO and predicts the same type of failure behavior for other thyristor-like devices.