Device Simulation of Carrier Life-Time Controlled GTO

Abstract

Recent development in power semiconductor devices has made remarkable advances in power electronics. Among them, the gate turn-off thyristor (GTO) is one of the most important devices. The carrier life-time controlled device has been proposed recently to realize low turn-off switching loss. So, the computer simulation for the device is now necessary to predict its characteristics.
In this study, we simulated carrier life-time controlled GTO by FEM program. The life-time control, such as heavy metal diffusion and electron beem irradiation, showed trade-off relation between on-state and turn-off condition. The partial life-time control, which generates lattice defects by light ion irradiation locally, showed the possibility to reduce turn-off loss and improve the trade-off relations. Furthermore, the numerical inner analysis showed relations between the location of the radiated point and variations of inner carrier distributions.