Improvement of Surge Current Capability of 3.3 kV SBD-Embedded SiC-MOSFET Module

SBD-embedded SiC-MOSFETs provide high reliability by preventing device degradation due to inherent body diode current. On the other hand, they have the disadvantage of lower surge current or I(2)t capability in general. This paper introduces the novel device structure named bipolar mode activation cell (BMA cell) to solve this problem. We actually evaluated the modules equipped with the chips having BMA cells. As a result, it has been confirmed that the surge current capability is equivalent to or higher than that of conventional Si-diodes. In addition, the pulse width dependency of the surge current capability of SBD-embedded SiC-MOSFET module has been evaluated and its estimated pulse width dependency curve is presented.