RADNEXT/R2E Webinar: Radiation effects in SiC power devices and possible implications on accelerator applications

Tuesday 31 Jan 2023, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Zurich

CERN

Ruben Garcia Alia (CERN)

 

During the late 1980s, it was demonstrated that power devices based on Silicon (Si) technology are rapidly approaching their theoretical limits, and new alternatives for materials should be considered in the future to reach higher efficiency. In this context, the wide-bandgap silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor has emerged as one of the most viable alternative to Si for the next-generation technology of power devices. Furthermore, due to the higher energy required for ionization respect to Si, SiC technology has been considered highly suitable to harsh working conditions including radiation exposure, making SiC technology desirable also for space, avionics and high-energy accelerator applications. However, despite the beneficial characteristics of SiC, its adoption in these fields is still limited by the unexpected susceptibility to single event effects (SEEs). Starting from the microscopic effects at device level and moving toward the radiation tolerance and reliability, this talk presents an overview of different SEEs induced by heavy-ion, proton and neutron irradiations in commercial SiC power MOSFETs, highlighting the differences with Si power devices.

 

   

 

Biography

 

Corinna Martinella received the MSc degree in Nuclear Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 2016. She spent one year as Technical Student at the European Organization for Nuclear Research – CERN, Switzerland, where she was working on the radiation monitoring systems for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In 2021, she obtained the PhD degree in Applied Physics from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in the framework of a collaboration with the R2E project at CERN and the Advanced Power Semiconductor (APS) Laboratory at ETH Zurich. Her research was devoted to radiation effects and reliability of commercial SiC power devices for high-energy physics, space and avionic applications. In particular, she focused on the single event effects (SEEs) mechanisms investigating the root cause of the radiation damage. Since 2021, she joined the APS Laboratory at ETH Zurich as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Teaching Assistant of Power Semiconductor.  Her technical interests include testing and modeling of radiation effects in power devices, investigation of radiation-induced defects in SiC using different spectroscopy analysis, and exploration of doping techniques for the next generation of SiC devices.

RADNEXT_webinar.pdf

1 Radiation effects in SiC power devices and possible implications on accelerator applications

During the late 1980s, it was demonstrated that power devices based on Silicon (Si) technology are rapidly approaching their theoretical limits, and new alternatives for materials should be considered in the future to reach higher efficiency. In this context, the wide-bandgap silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor has emerged as one of the most viable alternative to Si for the next-generation technology of power devices. Furthermore, due to the higher energy required for ionization respect to Si, SiC technology has been considered highly suitable to harsh working conditions including radiation exposure, making SiC technology desirable also for space, avionics and high-energy accelerator applications. However, despite the beneficial characteristics of SiC, its adoption in these fields is still limited by the unexpected susceptibility to single event effects (SEEs). Starting from the microscopic effects at device level and moving toward the radiation tolerance and reliability, this talk presents an overview of different SEEs induced by heavy-ion, proton and neutron irradiations in commercial SiC power MOSFETs, highlighting the differences with Si power devices.

Speaker: Dr Corinna Martinella (ETH)

RADNEXT_R2E_Seminar_Jan2023_C.Martinella.pdf

2 Q&A