A novel power PIN diode behavioral SPICE macromodel including the forward and reverse recoveries and the self-heating process

Abstract

This paper presents a new method of power PIN diodes SPICE macromodeling, based on the direct implementation of the physical based electrical and thermal device internal equations with nonlinear controlled voltage and current sources. In order to simulate the distributed effects of both the electrical and thermal phenomena within the device, the solutions of the ambipolar diffusion and heat diffusion equations were modeled with their irrational Laplace domain expressions. The electrical model of the PIN diode accurately simulates the conductivity modulation of the base region resistance, the emitter recombination effect and the forward and reverse recoveries and the thermal model simulates the device self-heating process. The new PIN diode SPICE macromodel is built-up only with nonlinear controlled voltage and current sources, low complexity SPICE devices, and thus leads to a high computational efficiency and low convergence problems. A key advantage of this macromodel is its portability to all the modern SPICE simulators that support the Analog Behavioral Macromodeling facilities. There were developed the behavioral macromodels for several power PIN diodes from different vendors and the simulation results show an excellent agreement with the data-sheets characteristics.