A Comprehensive Study of Short-Circuit Ruggedness of Silicon Carbide Power MOSFETs

The behavior of silicon carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs under stressful short-circuit (SC) conditions is investigated in this paper. Two different SC failure phenomena for SiC power MOSFETs are thoroughly reported. Experimental evidence and TCAD electrothermal simulations are exploited to describe and discriminate the failure sources. Physical causes are finally investigated and explained by means of properly calibrated numerical investigations and are reported along with their effects on devices' SC capability.