A novel Injection Enhanced Floating Emitter (IEFE) IGBT structure improving the ruggedness against short-circuit and thermal destruction

Abstract

In this work, we introduce a new collector IGBT structure that shows a huge improvement of the short-circuit (SC) ruggedness without deteriorating the static and dynamic losses of the device. The Injection Enhanced Floating Emitter (IEFE) concept enhances the emitter efficiency at the collector side by means of higher hole current injection which increases the bipolar current gain of the IGBT device. The simulation results indicate that the proposed structure can suppress a SC turn-off failure due to an electrical current crowding to a considerable extent. The critical pulse width to avoid thermal runaway of the leakage current after the SC event can be increased.