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International Journal of Power Management Electronics
Volume 2008 (2008), Article ID 523721, 8 pages
doi:10.1155/2008/523721
Research Article

Large Area Silicon Carbide Vertical JFETs for 1200 V Cascode Switch Operation

Victor Veliadis,1 Ty McNutt,1 Megan Snook,1 Harold Hearne,1 Paul Potyraj,1 Jeremy Junghans,1 and Charles Scozzie2

1Northrop Grumman Corporation, 1212 Winterson Road, Linthicum, MD 21090, USA
2Army Research Laboratory, 2800 Powder Mill Road, Adelphi, MD 20783, USA

Received 19 December 2007; Accepted 30 April 2008

Academic Editor: Peter Friedrichs

Copyright © 2008 Victor Veliadis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

SiC VJFETs are excellent candidates for reliable high-power/temperature switching as they only use pn junctions in the active device area where the high-electric fields occur. VJFETs do not suffer from forward voltage degradation, exhibit excellent short-circuit performance, and operate at 300∘C. 0.19 cm2 1200 V normally-on and 0.15 cm2 low-voltage normally-off VJFETs were fabricated. The 1200-V VJFET outputs 53 A with a forward drain voltage drop of 2 V and a specific onstate resistance of 5.4 mΩ cm2. The low-voltage VJFET outputs 28 A with a forward drain voltage drop of 3.3 V and a specific onstate resistance of 15 mΩ cm2. The 1200-V SiC VJFET was connected in the cascode configuration with two Si MOSFETs and with a low-voltage SiC VJFET to form normally-off power switches. At a forward drain voltage drop of 2.2 V, the SiC/MOSFETs cascode switch outputs 33 A. The all-SiC cascode switch outputs 24 A at a voltage drop of 4.7 V.