Destructive heavy ion SEE investigation of 3 IGBT devices

Previous work has well documented the occurrence of Single Event Burnout (SEB) and Single Event Gate Rupture (SEGR) in bipolar transistors. In this investigation, we measured destructive single event effects (SEE) on three different device types of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors. We examined three manufacturer's device types from Omnirel, Infineon, and Semikron with maximum operating V/sub CE/ biases of 600 to 1200 volts. All three device types were susceptible both SEE and SEGR, but the resulting estimated event rates in the natural environment are very low.