An RC-IGCT for Application at Up to 5.3kV

A 94mm, Reverse Conducting-Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor (RC-IGCT) for application at high DC voltage, up to 5.3kV has been manufactured and characterized. The design challenges for this type of device operating at such high voltage are to balance the losses to the ability to cool the device while keeping the snappiness of the diode part and the cosmic-ray failure rate to acceptable levels. The snappiness of the diode part has been overcome by implementing a new diode design in this high voltage (10kV) RC-IGCT, without influencing the technology curve under nominal operating conditions for the same silicon thickness. Furthermore, the experimental results show that the technology curve can be improved significantly with the new diode design by thinning the silicon while maintaining the soft reverse recovery behavior of the diode. The newly developed 94mm, 10kV RC-IGCT could be a device of choice for the low switching frequency high voltage power electronics applications, where one device could replace complicated series connection of two 4.5kV or 5.5kV devices per switch position.