The maximum controllable current of emitter switched thyristors employing the segmented p-base

Abstract

The maximum controllable current of an EST, which employs the segmented p-base (SB-EST), is investigated with the various design parameters, such as p-base surface doping concentration, segmented gate length and carrier lifetime, by performing 2-dimensional numerical simulation. The simulation results show that the maximum controllable current of the SB-EST with the p-base surface doping concentration of 5 × 1017 cm-3 is 900 A/cm2, while that of the conventional EST is 540 A/cm2. The SB-EST shows 52% higher maximum controllable current that the conventional EST independent of the carrier lifetime (0.1 µs to 0.5 µs).