Material aspects of wide temperature range amplifier design in SiC bipolar technologies
- PDF / 821,550 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 584.957 x 782.986 pts Page_size
- 40 Downloads / 189 Views
Silicon carbide (SiC) is the main semiconductor alternative for low loss high voltage devices. The wide energy band gap also makes it suitable for extreme environment electronics, including very high temperatures. Operating integrated electronics at 500–600 °C poses several materials challenges. However, once electronics is available for these high temperatures, the added challenge is designing integrated circuits capable of operating in the entire range from room temperature to 500 °C. Circuit designers have to take into account parameter variations of resistors and transistors, and models are needed for several temperatures. A common circuit design technique to manage parameter variations between different transistors, without wide temperature variations, is to use negative feedback in amplifier circuits. In this paper we show that this design technique is also useful for adapting to temperature changes during operation. Two different amplifier designs in SiC are measured and simulated from room temperature up to 500 °C.
I. INTRODUCTION
The advantage of wide band gap semiconducting materials has been pointed out for high voltage power electronics, where the high electric field strength allows a reduction of the blocking region, to reduce the onresistance and power losses.1,2 They have also been pointed out as contenders for extreme environment electronics.3 Because of higher bond strengths much higher radiation doses can be endured.4 The wide band gap also allows much higher temperature; as it takes more energy before the intrinsic concentration of thermally generated carriers stop the semiconducting operation of diodes and transistors.1 At this point in time silicon carbide (SiC) is the most mature wide band gap semiconductor material with commercially available SiC wafers in diameters of 100–200 mm.2 High voltage capability has been demonstrated with commercial 1.2–1.7 kV devices (diodes and transistors) as well as experimental 10–24 kV devices.5 Analog and digital Integrated circuits have been demonstrated experimentally operating at as high temperatures as 400–600 °C6–9 and pressure sensors even up to 800 °C.10 This makes application above 300 °C possible, much higher than SOI at 300 °C.3 In comparison, GaN has mainly shown commercial RF devices and some experimental 4 kV devices.12 GaN HEMT integrated circuits have been reported to operate up to 500 °C.11 Contributing Editor: Don W. Shaw a) Address all correspondence to this author. e-mail: [email protected], [email protected] This paper has been selected as an Invited Feature Paper. DOI: 10.1557/jmr.2016.321
Recently integrated circuits have been demonstrated in GaN CMOS technology.13 There are many challenges involved when we consider high temperature electronics. Not only do the semiconductors need to be semiconducting at high temperatures, insulators need to be insulating and metals conducting. Chemical reaction should be minimal at these temperatures between SiC and the chosen insulators or metals to assure long-term stability of the materials and reliability
Data Loading...
