Study on single-event burnout of SiC VDMOSFET: failure mechanism and influence factors

SiC VDMOSFET is a kind of significant power device in the supply system of spacecraft. However, it is very susceptible to space radiation particles causing catastrophic single-event burnout (SEB) occurred. In this paper, we present the 2D numerical simulation results of the SEB failure mechanism, influence factors and the most sensitive region to SEB in SiC VDMOSFET. The results show that when the transient current generated by collision ionization is large enough the SEB will occur. The magnitude of the transient current is related to the incident point, linear energy transfer (LET) and drain voltage. The occurrence of SEB increases with the LET and the drain voltage. The middle of the gate is the most sensitive region to SEB in 4H-SiC VDMOSFET.