Exploration on Electrical Isolation Between High-Voltage SiC Thyristor and Small-Signal Devices for Smart Power Devices

The
Smart Discrete
concept which monolithically integrates a vertical high-voltage power device with low-voltage smart circuits has been widely adopted in silicon world for many years and may bring similar benefits to SiC world. For example, it is highly desirable to integrate a gate driver circuit onto a high-voltage SiC thyristor for ultra-fast turn-on. However, the electrical isolation between the vertical high-voltage power device and the low-voltage circuit elements remains a major technical challenge for silicon, and even more so for SiC due to the very limited processing options. In this article, we propose a combination of shallow junction isolation (JI) and partial dielectric isolation (DI) for high-voltage 4H-SiC smart thyristor, which is monolithically integrated with low-voltage nMESFET circuits. The characterization of fabricated devices and analysis of leakage currents across the isolation structure have been done to experimentally verify the feasibility of the isolation method. 8 V parasitic lateral NPNP thyristor between a 6.3 kV 4H-SiC thyristor and isolation moats, 175 V lateral PNP transistor between the passive resistor and isolation moats, and 10 V lateral reverse-biased p-n diode between nMESFET and isolation moats are experimentally demonstrated.