A novel snapback-free reverse conducting IGBT with anti-parallel Shockley diode

Abstract

A novel reverse-conducting insulated gate bipolar transistor (RC-IGBT) with anti-parallel Shockley diode is proposed. By introducing an additional isolated p-n junction at the anode, the effect of anode-short is eliminated, and accordingly, the snapback problem is solved in the novel RC-IGBT. The snapback-free characteristics can be realized in a single cell with a width of less than 10 μm. Besides, the conduction voltages are significantly reduced and the distributions of minority carrier and of current are more uniform than the conventional RC-IGBT, in both the forward and the reverse conduction states. The tradeoff between Eoff and Von in the forward operation case and the tradeoff between Qrr and Von in the reverse operation case are both optimized in this paper.