Synergistic Effect of Electrical Stress and Neutron Irradiation on Silicon Carbide Power MOSFETs

Abstract

The synergistic effect of radiation and bias voltage for the commercial silicon carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs was investigated by 14-MeV neutron irradiation in this article. The types of C3M0065090D and C2M0080120D commercial SiC power MOSFETs from CREE studied in this article show consistent changes after the 14-MeV neutron irradiation. The results show that the devices biased during irradiation experienced more degradation than that only irradiated and biased devices. Compared with the devices only irradiated and biased, the devices biased during irradiation experienced an additional decrease in saturation current and a further decrease in peak transconductance. The defects in the devices were characterized by the low-frequency noise (LFN) and deep-level transient spectrum (DLTS) methods. The results show that the synergistic effect increased the defect concentration of the device, resulting in further degradation of the electrical performance of the device compared to the control group without a bias voltage. The defect characterization shows that the drain–source voltage leads to the accumulation of carbon and silicon vacancies induced by irradiation at the interface, which results in intensified radiation damage and significant changes in the performance of the device at low neutron fluence.