Dorothea Werber

6.5kV RCDC: For increased power density in IGBT-modules

A reverse conducting IGBT in trench technology is presented. By this approach no carrier life time means are necessary to balance static and dynamic losses of the diode. The diodes p-emitter efficiency can be dynamically tailored by the applied gate voltage due to inversion charge carriers in the vicinity of the gate trench. This opens up the opportunity for a variety of gate control schemes with the aim of a charge carrier reduction before commutation thus reducing the recovery and the corresponding IGBT turn-on losses while the on-state diode losses remain low. A simple substitution of the IGBT and diode dies by the RCDC chips in the industry standard packages enables a significant increase of the power density (e.g. up to 30% for typical traction application) due to a thermal benefit given by lower thermal resistances as well as by a reduction of the dynamic losses due to special gate control.