A High-Performance 4H-SiC JFET With Reverse Recovery Capability and Low Switching Loss

Abstract

A novel high-performance 1700-V 4H-Silicon carbide (SiC) junction field-effect transistor (JFET) with reverse recovery capability and low switching loss is proposed in this article. As for the proposed 4H-SiC JFET, the gate region of the conventional 4H-SiC JFET is split into two segments, one of which is replaced by the source. A Schottky barrier diode (SBD) is integrated in the sidewall of the channel region, which greatly improves the performances of the 4H-SiC JFET. Compared with the conventional 4H-SiC JFET, the numerical simulation results show that the specific ON-resistance ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${R}_{ \mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON},\text{ sp}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), gate–drain capacitance ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${C}_{\text{GD}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), and gate–drain charge ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Q}_{\text{gd}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) of the proposed 4H-SiC JFET are reduced by 25.57%, 99.96%, and 72.91%, respectively. The switching loss is reduced by about 91%, and the average gate drive power consumption is reduced by more than 36% while the frequency range is from 10 to 400 kHz. The results also demonstrate that the proposed device has good reverse recovery performance and reduces switching loss, compared with the current commercial SiC devices.