A Novel Insulated Gate Trigger Thyristor Integrated With Gate Transient Voltage Suppressor for Ultrahigh di/dt Pulse Switching

In this letter, a novel insulated gate trigger thyristor integrated with gate transient voltage suppressor (T-IGTT) is firstly proposed and fabricated for ultrahigh di/dt pulse power applications. Distinguished from the conventional IGTT (C-IGTT), the proposed T-IGTT features a protective gate transient voltage suppressor (TVS) diode. This gate TVS diode is implemented by reversed $\text{P}^{+}$ -cathode/ N-well junction between the gate and cathode electrode, which significantly suppresses the transient gate overvoltage and improves the gate robustness under electrostatic discharge. Under high-di/dt switching, the gate TVS diode turns on, which contributes to the close following of gate voltage ( ${V}_{\text {G}}{)}$ against ${V}_{\text {C}}$ . As a consequence, the transient gate-cathode voltage ( ${V}_{\text {GC}}={V}_{\text {G}}$ - ${V}_{\text {C}}{)}$ would be suppressed and the destructive failure of the gate oxide could be avoided. Experimental results show that, the implementation of gate TVS does not bring about pulse performances penalties. While, thanks to the integrated gate TVS diode, the maximum gate-cathode voltage ( ${V}_{\text {GC-}{max}}{)}$ of proposed T-IGTT is only 28V at di/dt =20.6kA/ $\mu \text{s}$ , while that of C-IGTT is 108 V. Additionally, the integrated gate TVS diode improves the ESD level of the proposed T-IGTT to >8000 V, while that of the C-IGTT is only 1300V.