A novel snapback-free reverse-conducting (RC) SOI-LIGBT with a built-in thyristor

Abstract

A novel reverse-conducting (RC) silicon-on-insulator lateral insulated gate bipolar transistor (SOI-LIGBT) is proposed. It features a built-in thyristor formed by introducing a floating P-well surrounding an N⁺ collector. The realization of the thyristor barely increases chip area or complicates fabrication. It helps to realize the RC function and prevents the device from working in the unipolar mode, which eliminates the snapback problem. Moreover, since the thyristor provides an electron extraction path during the turn-off operation, the switching performance is improved. Simulation results show that, compared with the conventional LIGBT with an antiparallel diode, the proposed device presents the reverse recovery charge (Q_rr) and the turn-off loss (E_off) reduced by more than 30%, and the RC voltage drop (V_F) decreased by about 0.1 V.