Turn-off behaviour of epitaxial planar and trench gate

IGBTs and nonepitaxial planar gate IGBT under hard and

soft switchings
H.Iwamoto, H.Kondo, YYu, A.Kawakami and M.Nakaoka
Abstract: The results of investigation on turn-off dynamic operations of IGBTs are presented in the
paper. Three-types of IGBTs which have planar and trench gate structures by epitaxial wafer and
planar gate structure by nonepitaxial wafer are compared under conditions of hard and soft switching
commutation topologies. Collector-emitter voltage and collector current waveforms of each IGBT
and power losses are analysed under conditions of various parameters through simulation and in
experiment. Moreover, carrier behaviour, electric field and potential distributions inside the chips are
studied by simulation technique. It is noted that the trench gate IGBT has an advantage over the
other-types for the hard switching application from the point of view of switching losses, and both the
planar and trench gate IGBTs on the basis of an epitaxial wafer are more suitable for soft switching
applications because of lower switching and on-state losses.

Introduction

In recent years, IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistor)

have been widely used for hard switching power converters.
These are also used effectively for soft switching converters
but the application areas are limited to small and medium
power capacity equipments. Since the soft switching circuit
technology has the advantage of being able to improve
such characteristics as power dissipation, electromagnetic
noise, operating frequency and stresses to motors and
IGBTs, the application of IGBTs to soft switching power
converters is increasing in the area of not only low power
but also high power capacity.
IGBTs are classified into two types: non-punch-through
(NPT) and punch-through (PT). The starting material of
the NPT-type IGBT is the single crystal wafer and the lifetime of the chip is not controlled. On the other hand, the
PT-type IGBT uses an epitaxial wafer and has an n+ buffer
layer. Since the lifetime of the nf buffer layer is limited, the
turn-off and tail times of a PT-type IGBT are shorter and
switching loss is smaller than those of the NPT-type IGBT.
This is the reason why PT-type IGBT is chosen for the
analysis in this paper. Moreover, a PT-type IGBT with a
trench gate structure was developed recently and it has
such superior characteristics as extremely low on-state voltage and loss compared with the conventional planar gate
structure IGBT [l, 23.
The analysis of dynamic operation for three kinds of PTtype IGBTs under hard and soft switching operating condi-

tions are carried out through both simulation and experimental measurement. Based on the analytical result, the
suitability of IGBTs for hard and soft switching applications is studied from a practical point of view.
2

Analytical method

2.1 IGBT structures

IGBTs with the ratings of 12OOV and 50A are adopted for
the analysis. The prototype IGBT chips are made experimentally and they are assembled in power module packages which have very low internal inductance. The basic
structures of the three types of chips are illustrated in Fig. 1
and major design specifications are listed in Table 1. Those
IGBTs have an n+ buffer layer for improving such characteristics as the oil-state, switching and break over voltage.
They are designed for high frequency operation at hard
switching application.
Table 1: Types of IGBTs used for analysis
Type A

Type B
nonepitaxial

wafer

epitaxial

epitaxial

gate structure

planar

trench

planar

on-state voltage 2.9V

at IC= 50A

1.9v

3.1V

Current density
at IC= 50A

100A/cm2

140A/cm2

75A/cm2

n+ buffer layer

with local
with local
without local
lifetime control lifetime control lifetime control

No

No

1 wm

3wm

0E E , 2001

lifetime control Yes

ver whole wafer

IEE Proceedings oilline no. 20010487

design rule

Dot lO.lO49/ipepa:2oOlO487
Paper first received 6th June 2000 and in revised form 27th April 2001
H. Iwamoto, H. Kondo, Y. Yu and A. Kawakami are with the Power Device
Division, Mitsubishi Electric Co., Fukuoka, Japan
M. Nakaoka is with the Electrid System Division, The Graduate School of
Science and Engheering, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi, Japan

Type A is the 3rd generation IGBT with a planar gate

structure by epitaxial wafer, and the conventional device
structure and technologies are used. The electron beam is
irradiated into the whole area of the wafer to control the
lifetime.

IEE Proc-Electr Power Appl., Vol. 148, No. 5, September 2001

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