High voltage device edge termination for wide temperature range plus humidity with surface charge control (SCC) technology

A novel high voltage edge termination utilizing Surface-Charge-Control (SCC) technology has been proposed for a wide range temperature with humidity. Under electrically biased and high-humidity conditions, charges generated by the high electric field and external perturbations accumulate on the silicon surface, which eventually degrades the blocking capability. The proposed edge termination structure has an optimized semi-insulated layer on the silicon surface. Due to this optimized layer, the accumulated charges on the silicon surface are swept away, which contributes to the improvement of the reliability. HTRB and low-temperature with high-humidity tests were carried out on the fabricated 6.5kV IGBT devices utilizing the SCC technology. The results validate that the proposed SCC technology has improved the long-term stability and the robustness against high humidity conditions.