Temperature Dependence of Minority Carrier Lifetime in Epitaxially Grown p<sup>+</sup>-p<sup>–</sup>-n<sup>+</sup> 4H-SiC Drift Step Recovery Diodes

Abstract

In this paper we report on the effect of temperature and injection level on the effective lifetime of non-equilibrium charge carriers in p-base of 4H-SiC PiN diodes. Studies were carried out on 1kV drift step recovery diodes (DSRDs) with p+-p--n+. The lifetime of non-equilibrium charge carriers in 4H-SiC p+-p--n+ structures increases by an average of 6 times from 250ns to 1.4μs with the increase of the samples temperature from 300K to 673K. However, increase of the injection level in the drift region from 2.3·1016cm-3 to 5.9·1016cm-3 does not affect the lifetime indicating that Shockley-Read-Hall recombination processes are dominating.