Trends in power discrete devices

Over the last 10 years, revolutionary advances have occurred in power discrete devices which have spurred significant advances in the capability of power electronic systems. The introduction of power MOSFETs in the 1970s and the power IGBT in the 1980s enabled design of very compact, high efficiency systems due to the greatly enhanced power gain resulting from the high input impedance of these structures. Since then, research at PSRC on a variety of MOS-gated thyristors (DG-BRT, EST) has been conducted, resulting in some promising improvements in the trade-off between on-state power loss, switching power loss, and the forward biased safe-operating-area (FBSOA). Concurrent improvements in power rectifiers have been achieved at low voltage ratings using the TMBS structure, and at high voltage ratings using the MPS structure. On the longer term, silicon carbide Schottky rectifiers and power MOSFETs offer another 10-fold improvement in performance if technological and cost barriers can be overcome.