Switching performance of a 1200 V SiC-Trench-MOSFET in a low-power module

In modern power electronic systems, fast switching semiconductors like unipolar diodes and transistors are required in order to reduce losses or to save filter size, weight and cost by using higher switching frequencies. In this paper, results of a detailed characterization of a 1200 V SiC-Trench-MOSFET are presented. The device under test is a half-bridge module with an on-resistance of 45 mOmega per chip resulting in a rated current of 25 A per chip. In general, the SiC-Trench-MOSFET shows superior performance in terms of switching behavior and overall losses. The analysis confirms the full controllability of the voltage slopes in turn-on and turn-off by means of the gate resistor. Compared with the SiC-JFET [1], the SiC-Trench-MOSFET allows a significant reduction of the switching losses. The device concept of the SiC-Trench-MOSFET shows considerably suppressed parasitic turn-on under typical operating conditions. This results in drastically reduced recovery losses leading to very low total switching losses.