Power semiconductor device


A power semiconductor device is a semiconductor device used as a switch or rectifier in power electronics. Such a device is also called a power device or, when used in an integrated circuit, a power IC.
A power semiconductor device is usually used in "commutation mode", and therefore has a design optimized for such usage; it should usually not be used in linear operation. Linear power circuits are widespread as voltage regulators, audio amplifiers, and radio frequency amplifiers.
Power semiconductors are found in systems delivering as little as a few tens of milliwatts for a headphone amplifier, up to around a gigawatt in a high voltage direct current transmission line.

History

The first semiconductor device used in power circuits was the electrolytic rectifier - an early version was described by a French experimenter, A. Nodon, in 1904. These were briefly popular with early radio experimenters as they could be improvised from aluminum sheets, and household chemicals. They had low withstand voltages and limited efficiency.
The first solid-state power semiconductor devices were copper oxide rectifiers, used in early battery chargers and power supplies for radio equipment, announced in 1927 by L.O. Grundahl and P. H. Geiger.
The first germanium power semiconductor device appeared in 1952 with the introduction of the power diode by R.N. Hall. It had a reverse voltage blocking capability of 200 V and a current rating of 35 A.
Germanium bipolar transistors with substantial power handling capabilities were introduced around 1952; with essentially the same construction as signal devices, but better heat sinking. Power handling capability evolved rapidly, and by 1954 germanium alloy junction transistors with 100 watt dissipation were available. These were all relatively low-frequency devices, used up to around 100 kHz, and up to 85 degrees Celsius junction temperature. Silicon power transistors were not made until 1957, but when available had better frequency response than germanium devices, and could operate up to 150 C junction temperature.
The thyristor appeared in 1957. It is able to withstand very high reverse breakdown voltage and is also capable of carrying high current. However, one disadvantage of the thyristor in switching circuits is that once it becomes 'latched-on' in the conducting state; it cannot be turned off by external control, as the thyristor turn-off is passive, i.e., the power must be disconnected from the device. Thyristors which could be turned off, called gate turn-off thyristors, were introduced in 1960. These overcome some limitations of the ordinary thyristor, because they can be turned on or off with an applied signal.

Power MOSFET

A breakthrough in power electronics came with the invention of the MOSFET by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. Generations of MOSFET transistors enabled power designers to achieve performance and density levels not possible with bipolar transistors. Due to improvements in MOSFET technology, the power MOSFET became available in the 1970s.
In 1969, Hitachi introduced the first vertical power MOSFET, which would later be known as the VMOS. From 1974, Yamaha, JVC, Pioneer Corporation, Sony and Toshiba began manufacturing audio amplifiers with power MOSFETs. International Rectifier introduced a 25 A, 400 V power MOSFET in 1978. This device allows operation at higher frequencies than a bipolar transistor, but is limited to low voltage applications.
The Insulated-gate bipolar transistor was developed in the 1980s, and became widely available in the 1990s. This component has the power handling capability of the bipolar transistor and the advantages of the isolated gate drive of the power MOSFET.

Common devices

Some common power devices are the power MOSFET, power diode, thyristor, and IGBT. The power diode and power MOSFET operate on similar principles to their low-power counterparts, but are able to carry a larger amount of current and are typically able to withstand a larger reverse-bias voltage in the off-state.
Structural changes are often made in a power device in order to accommodate the higher current density, higher power dissipation, and/or higher reverse breakdown voltage. The vast majority of the discrete power devices are built using a vertical structure, whereas small-signal devices employ a lateral structure. With the vertical structure, the current rating of the device is proportional to its area, and the voltage blocking capability is achieved in the height of the die. With this structure, one of the connections of the device is located on the bottom of the semiconductor die.
The power MOSFET is the most common power device in the world, due to its low gate drive power, fast switching speed, and advanced paralleling capability. It has a wide range of power electronic applications, such as portable information appliances, power integrated circuits, cell phones, notebook computers, and the communications infrastructure that enables the Internet. As of 2010, the power MOSFET accounts for the majority of the power transistor market, followed by the IGBT, then the RF amplifier, and then the bipolar junction transistor.

Solid-state devices

Classifications

A power device may be classified as one of the following main categories :
Another classification is less obvious, but has a strong influence on device performance:
A majority carrier device is faster, but the charge injection of minority carrier devices allows for better on-state performance.

Diodes

An ideal diode should have the following characteristics:
In reality, the design of a diode is a trade-off between performance in on-state, off-state, and commutation. Indeed, the same area of the device must sustain the blocking voltage in the off-state and allow current flow in the on-state; as the requirements for the two states are completely opposite, a diode has to be either optimised for one of them, or time must be allowed to switch from one state to the other.
These trade-offs are the same for all power devices; for instance, a Schottky diode has excellent switching speed and on-state performance, but a high level of leakage current in the off-state. On the other hand, a PIN diode is commercially available in different commutation speeds, but any increase in speed is necessarily associated with a lower performance in the on-state.

Switches

The trade-offs between voltage, current, and frequency ratings also exist for a switch. In fact, any power semiconductor relies on a PIN diode structure in order to sustain voltage; this can be seen in figure 2. The power MOSFET has the advantages of a majority carrier device, so it can achieve a very high operating frequency, but it cannot be used with high voltages; as it is a physical limit, no improvement is expected in the design of a silicon MOSFET concerning its maximum voltage ratings. However, its excellent performance in low voltage applications make it the device of choice for applications with voltages below 200 V. By placing several devices in parallel, it is possible to increase the current rating of a switch. The MOSFET is particularly suited to this configuration, because its positive thermal coefficient of resistance tends to result in a balance of current between the individual devices.
The IGBT is a recent component, so its performance improves regularly as technology evolves. It has already completely replaced the bipolar transistor in power applications; a power module is available in which several IGBT devices are connected in parallel, making it attractive for power levels up to several megawatts, which pushes further the limit at which thyristors and GTOs become the only option. Basically, an IGBT is a bipolar transistor driven by a power MOSFET; it has the advantages of being a minority carrier device, with the high input impedance of a MOSFET.
The major limitation of the IGBT for low voltage applications is the high voltage drop it exhibits in the on-state. Compared to the MOSFET, the operating frequency of the IGBT is relatively low, mainly because of a problem during turn-off known as current-tail: The slow decay of the conduction current during turn-off results from a slow recombination of a large number of carriers that flood the thick 'drift' region of the IGBT during conduction. The net result is that the turn-off switching loss of an IGBT is considerably higher than its turn-on loss. Generally, in datasheets, turn-off energy is mentioned as a measured parameter; that number has to be multiplied with the switching frequency of the intended application in order to estimate the turn-off loss.
At very high power levels, a thyristor-based device is still the only choice. This device can be turned on by a pulse provided by a driving circuit, but cannot be turned off by removing the pulse. A thyristor turns off as soon as no more current flows through it; this happens automatically in an alternating current system on each cycle, or requires a circuit with the means to divert current around the device. Both MCTs and GTOs have been developed to overcome this limitation, and are widely used in power distribution applications.
A few applications of power semiconductors in switch mode include lamp dimmers, switch mode power supplies, induction cookers, automotive ignition systems, and AC and DC electric motor drives of all sizes.

Amplifiers

Amplifiers operate in the active region, where both device current and voltage are non-zero. Consequently power is continually dissipated and its design is dominated by the need to remove excess heat from the semiconductor device. Power amplifier devices can often be recognized by the heat sink used to mount the devices. Multiple types of power semiconductor amplifier device exist, such as the bipolar junction transistor, the vertical MOS field effect transistor, and others. Power levels for individual amplifier devices range up to hundreds of watts, and frequency limits range up to the lower microwave bands. A complete audio power amplifier, with two channels and a power rating on the order of tens of watts, can be put into a small integrated circuit package, needing only a few external passive components to function.
Another important application for active-mode amplifiers is in linear regulated power supplies, when an amplifier device is used as a voltage regulator to maintain load voltage at a desired setting. While such a power supply may be less energy efficient than a switched mode power supply, the simplicity of application makes them popular, especially in current ranges up to about one amp.

Parameters

  1. Breakdown voltage: Often, there is a trade-off between breakdown voltage rating and on-resistance, because increasing the breakdown voltage by incorporating a thicker and lower doped drift region leads to a higher on-resistance.
  2. On-resistance: A higher current rating lowers the on-resistance due to greater numbers of parallel cells. This increases overall capacitance and slows down the speed.
  3. Rise and fall times: The amount of time it takes to switch between the on-state and the off-state.
  4. Safe-operating area: This is a thermal dissipation and "latch-up" consideration.
  5. Thermal resistance: This is an often ignored but extremely important parameter from the point of view of practical design; a semiconductor does not perform well at elevated temperature, and yet due to large current conduction, a power semiconductor device invariably heats up. Therefore, such a devices needs to be cooled by removing that heat continuously; packaging and heatsink technology provide a means for removing heat from a semiconductor device by conducting it to the external environment. Generally, a large current device has a large die and packaging surface areas and lower thermal resistance.

    Research and development

Packaging

The role of packaging is to:
Many of the reliability issues of a power device are either related to excessive temperature or fatigue due to thermal cycling. Research is currently carried out on the following topics:
Research is also ongoing on electrical issues such as reducing the parasitic inductance of packaging; this inductance limits the operating frequency, because it generates losses during commutation.
A low-voltage MOSFET is also limited by the parasitic resistance of its package, as its intrinsic on-state resistance is as low as one or two milliohms.
Some of the most common type of power semiconductor packages include the TO-220, TO-247, TO-262, TO-3, D2Pak, etc.

Improvement of structures

The IGBT design is still under development and can be expected to provide increases in operating voltages. At the high-power end of the range, the MOS-controlled thyristor is a promising device. Achieving a major improvement over the conventional MOSFET structure by employing the super junction charge-balance principle: essentially, it allows the thick drift region of a power MOSFET to be heavily doped, thereby reducing the electrical resistance to electron flow without compromising the breakdown voltage. This is juxtaposed with a region that is similarly doped with the opposite carrier polarity ; these two similar, but oppositely doped regions effectively cancel out their mobile charge and develop a 'depleted region' that supports the high voltage during the off-state. On the other hand, during the on-state, the higher doping of the drift region allows for the easy flow of carriers, thereby reducing on-resistance. Commercial devices, based on this super junction principle, have been developed by companies like Infineon and International Rectifier.

Wide band-gap semiconductors

The major breakthrough in power semiconductor devices is expected from the replacement of silicon by a wide band-gap semiconductor. At the moment, silicon carbide is considered to be the most promising. A SiC Schottky diode with a breakdown voltage of 1200 V is commercially available, as is a 1200 V JFET. As both are majority carrier devices, they can operate at high speed. A bipolar device is being developed for higher voltages. Among its advantages, silicon carbide can operate at a higher temperature and has a lower thermal resistance than silicon, allowing for better cooling.