Novel MOS-cell Engineered 4.5 kV Enhanced-planar IGBT Device for Improved Short-Circuit Capability

This paper presents a novel MOS-cell engineered 4.5 kV planar IGBT device for improved short-circuit capability without adversely affecting its on-state losses. The capability of new cell design for improving onstate voltage (Vcesat) versus short-circuit current (ISC) trade-off is experimentally demonstrated on Hitachi Energy’s state-of-the-art 4.5 kV enhanced-planar IGBT platform. With respect to our well-established high voltage planar IGBT cell generation, the new designs showed about 34% lower ISC for the same Vcesat which resulted in ∼ 4 mus gain in SC withstand time when measured at 125deg C. The other performance parameters such as gate-leakage, blocking voltage and turn-off switching losses also remain largely unaffected for a well-optimized design. The new MOS-cell design principle can be extended to both trench and planar architecture for any MOS based devices (IGBT, RC-IGBT, MOSFET) and for different voltage classes.