Research on characteristics of RC-IGBT with low switching energy consumption

This paper presents a 1200V-class reverse conducting insulated gate bipolar transistor (RC-IGBT) with low switching energy consumption (LE-RC-IGBT). Its structure was designed in accordance with the latest enhanced trench and field stop technology while incorporating an anti-parallel Free Wheeling Diode (FWD) between the adjacent FS-IGBT cells. With the Emitter Shorted Diode (ESD) technology employed in the design of the FWD structure, the FWD and FS-IGBT can be made simultaneously. By using the same trench etching technique of the gate process, oxide trench was formed on the back side of the device to increase the short-circuit resistance between the N+ Collector and the P+ Collector on the back of the RC-IGBT. The voltage snapback phenomenon of the conventional RC-IGBT was completely eliminated. The electrical characteristics of the RC-IGBT were investigated by using Sentaurus-TCAD. Simulation results show that the switching energy consumption of the proposed LE-RC-IGBT is reduced by approximately 50%compared with the conventional one.