Design rules for field plate edge termination in SiC Schottky diodes

Practical design of silicon carbide (SiC) Schottky diodes incorporating a field plate necessitates an understanding of how the addition of the field plate affects the performance parameters and the relationship between the diode structure and diode performance. In this paper, design rules are presented for SiC Schottky diodes that incorporate field plate edge termination. The use of an appropriate field plate edge termination can improve the reverse breakdown voltage of a SiC Schottky diode by a factor of two. Reverse breakdown voltage values can be obtained that are up to 88% of the theoretical maximums.