Anode Engineering for the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor—A Comparative Review

Abstract

Significant effort has been placed in anode engineering for the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) as a method to enhance the on-state/switching loss tradeoff. For the first time, we have taken a comprehensive selection of these designs and individually implemented them all into a 1200 V vertical structure. It is shown that all passive anode engineering structures lie on or above a forward voltage drop/inductive turn-off loss tradeoff curve which can also be generated through changing the emitter (anode) Gummel number of a conventional IGBT. Tradeoff enhancement can be achieved through the use of active anode structures. Such structures incorporate an additional gate at the anode and are considered in the study. The influence of lifetime on the tradeoff is considered and it is shown that optimum device performance can be achieved through both control of the lifetime and the emitter Gummel number/anode engineering. The relative shift in the tradeoff curve is also considered for optimum device design. Furthermore, the effect of the tradeoff curve on the total power loss with varying switching frequency and duty cycle is also discussed. high temperature operation, it is shown that the shift must be carefully considered for optimum device design. Furthermore, the effect of the tradeoff curve on the total power loss with varying switching frequency and duty cycle is also discussed.