Characterization of ESD stress effects on SiC MOSFETs using photon emission spectral signatures

This article presents a robustness study of SiC power MOSFETs to Electrostatic Discharge (ESD), by photon emission (PE) and spectral PE techniques (SPE). Investigations in different polarization modes are performed in photoemission PE, and a linear dependence in gate voltage has been identified. A decrease in the intensity of the ESD degraded device emissions has been noticed. A SPE system has been developed, and PE spectrum has been extracted for both fresh and degraded devices. SPE analyses are reported and correlated with electrical analyses to localize and identify the failure. The ESD degradation is seems to be related to a pn junction degradation. C-V analyses are conducted to prove this hypothesis.