Abstract
The application of conventional power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is limited by the famous one-dimensional “silicon limit” (1D-limit) in the trade-off relationship between specific on-resistance (RSP) and breakdown voltage (BV). In this paper, a new power MOSFET architecture is proposed to achieve a beyond-1D-limit RSP-BV trade-off. Numerical TCAD (technology computer-aided design) simulations were carried out to comparatively study the proposed MOSFET, the conventional power MOSFET, and the superjunction MOSFET. All the devices were designed with the same breakdown voltage of ~550 V. The proposed MOSFET features a deep trench between neighboring p-bodies and multiple p-islands located at the sidewall and bottom of the trench. The proposed MOSFET allows a high doping concentration in the drift region, which significantly reduces its RSP compared to the conventional power MOSFET. The multiple p-islands split the electric field into multiple peaks and help the proposed MOSFET maintain a similar breakdown voltage to the conventional power MOSFET with the same drift region thickness. Another famous device technology, the superjunction MOSFET (SJ-MOSFET), also breaks the 1D-limit. However, the SJ-MOSFET suffers a snappy reverse recovery performance, which is a notorious drawback of SJ-MOSFET and limits the range of its application. On the contrary, the proposed MOSFET presents a superior reverse recovery performance and can be used in various power switching applications where hard commutation is required.
Highlights
The power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is a commonly used power switch in power switching applications
In off-state, the electric field in the SJ-MOSFET keeps almost constant along the depth of the n/p pillars, so the pillars can be much shorter than the drift region of the conventional power MOSFET for the same breakdown voltage (BV)
The performance of the conventional power MOSFET is limited by the RSP-BV trade-off relationship: RSP ∝ BV2.5, which is known as the 1D-silicon-limit
Summary
The power metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) is a commonly used power switch in power switching applications. To obtain a higher breakdown voltage (BV) in the conventional power MOSFET, the drift region has to be thicker and more lightly doped, which leads to a higher specific on-resistance RSP (= RDS-ON × area). The SJ-MOSFET breaks the 1D-limit in RSP -BV trade-off, owing to the shorter and more heavily doped n-pillar compared to the drift region of conventional power MOSFET [8,9,10,11]. A new power MOSFET is proposed to obtain a beyond-1D-limit RSP -BV trade-off and a superior reverse recovery performance. The proposed MOSFET was comprehensively studied using numerical TCAD (technology computer-aided design) device simulations and mixed-mode circuit simulations and compared with a conventional power MOSFET and a SJ-MOSFET. Shockley-Reed-Hall and Auger combination, impact ionization (Okuto model), doping-dependent transport, high-field saturation effects, band narrowing, are all considered
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