Investigation Into the Third Quadrant Characteristics of Silicon Carbide MOSFET
Lei Tang, Huaping Jiang, Xiaohan Zhong, Guanqun Qiu, Hua Mao, Xiaofeng Jiang, Xiaowei Qi, Changhong Du, Qianlei Peng, Li Liu, Li Ran
Abstract
Owing to the superior performances, silicon carbide (SiC) metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors ( <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small> s) attract a lot of attention. To increase the power density, it is desired to use the third quadrant (3rd-quad) characteristics of the <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small> rather than the externally paralleled Schottky diode for freewheeling during the deadtime. It has been known that the 3rd-quad is far more than a body diode, and the MOS channel is also an important part of it. The channel may be not fully closed and, therefore, play a significant role in the reverse conduction even when the gate is zero or negatively biased. However, a comprehensive study of the 3rd-quad characteristics is still to be conducted. In this article, experiments and simulations are conducted and a physical model is developed to explain the 3rd-quad characteristics of the SiC <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small> . It reveals how and why the 3rd-quad characteristics are affected by the gate voltage and the junction temperature. This article is helpful for not only the application of SiC <sc xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">mosfet</small> but also the device design.