The future of power semiconductor device technology

Power electronic systems have benefited greatly during the past ten years from the revolutionary advances that have occurred in power discrete devices. The introduction of power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) in the 1970s and the insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) 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. Recently, significant improvements in the performance of silicon-power MOSFETs has been achieved by using innovative vertical structures with charge coupled regions. Meanwhile, silicon IGBTs continue to dominate the medium- and high-voltage application space sue to scaling of their voltage ratings and refinements to their gate structure achieved by using very large scale integration (VLSI) technology and trench gate regions. Research on a variety of MOS-gated thyristors has also been conducted, resulting in some promising improvements in the tradeoff between on-state power loss, switching power loss, and the safe-operating-area. Concurrent improvements in power rectifiers have been achieved at low-voltage ratings using Schottky rectifier structures containing trenches and at high-voltage ratings using structures that combine junction and Schottky barrier contacts. On the longer term, silicon carbide Schottky rectifiers and power MOSFETs offer at least another tenfold improvement in performance. Although the projected performance enhancements have been experimentally demonstrated, the defect density and cost of the starting material are determining the pace of commercialization of this technology at present.