Page 89 - NEW Armstrong Book - 2

The Importance of
SiC Semiconductors for
Energy Efficiency
T
he development of new tech- nologies in power electron- ics has directed the industrial
By Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio
more switching power and less energy required in the switch-on and switch-off phase. Lower heat loss also makes it possible to eliminate cooling systems, thus reducing system space, weight, and infrastructure cost. With the growing deployment of IoT and AI applications and the migration to the cloud, a higher level of efficiency in the management of energy-intensive IT infrastructure will become increasingly important.
SiC has a wider bandgap than pure silicon, allowing the technology to be used even at very high operating temperatures.
Wide-bandgap
parameters
WBG semiconductors’ wider bandgap compared with common semiconduc- tors such as silicon or gallium arsenide translates into a greater breakdown electric field and the ability to oper- ate at high temperatures and reduce radiation susceptibility without sacri- ficing electrical characteristics.
As the temperature increases, the thermal energy of the electrons in the valence band also increases until they reach the necessary energy (at a certain temperature) to jump to the conduction band. In the case of silicon, this tem- perature is about 150˚C; in the case of wide-bandgap semiconductors, these values are much higher.
A high electric breakdown field offers a higher breakdown voltage. This voltage is the value at which the breakdown body diode is broken and an ever- increasing current flows between source and drain. The breakdown volt- age of a p-n junction diode is propor- tional to the breakdown electric field but inversely proportional to the con- centration of the material.
The high electric field offers excellent levels of doping and resistance of the drift regions, which are narrower in SiC than in silicon. For the same break- down voltage, the width of the drift region is inversely proportional
market toward other resources to opti- mize energy efficiency. Silicon and ger- manium are two of the main materials used today to produce semiconductors, but their limitations in terms of losses and switching speed have steered development toward new wide-bandgap resources, such as silicon carbide.
SiC offers a higher efficiency level than silicon, mainly because of its significantly lower energy loss and reverse-recovery charge. This leads to
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