Assessment of High and Low Temperature Performance of SiC BJTs

This paper addresses the performance of SiC NPN Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs) at high and low temperature. A current gain of 50 at room temperature was obtained which decreases to 25 at 275 oC. A maximum current gain (β) of 111 has been reported at -86 oC. At low temperature (below -86 oC), the current gain drops rapidly because of carrier freezout effect. At room temperature, a minimum on-resistance of 7 mΩ-cm2 was obtained. This increases to 28 mΩ-cm2 at 275 oC. The on-resistance of BJTs is approximately unaffected by lowering the temperature down to -86 oC from room temperature. Below -86 oC, the on-resistance jumps up rapidly because of carrier freezeout. Electrical performance of BJTs have been fairly stable during stress measurement at high temperature (120 hours at 100 oC ) at a collector bias of 1000V (with open base) for devices with a breakdown voltage of 1200V.The devices have been stressed further at low (i.e., 6) and high gain (i.e., 15) at room temperature. Initial degradation within first hour of stress test has been reported and then degradation stabilizes out. Packaged devices were tested up to 550 oC and performed admirably well up to that temperature.