Analysis of SiC Schottky diodes after thermal vacuum test by means of lock-in infrared thermography

In this work, SiC Schottky diodes specifically developed for the BepiColombo space mission are studied by Lock-in Infrared Thermography (LIT) to analyse local defects observed in their top metallization and passivation layers appeared after thermal vacuum tests. Such defects might potentially be the root cause of the increase in reverse leakage current measured after such accelerated tests.